Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be as brief as possible. My colleague has covered most of the things I wished to say. One concern I have is that we seem to be talking more about Ned Kelly than the respectable banks the Minister of State and I once knew. I am quite concerned that somewhere along the line these gangsters must have come together and agreed that they would all apply the same principle on tracker mortgages to their customers. There is an internal process for the banks to identify affected customers. My understanding of the instruction is that internal process is not just to be independent of the bank, but that there is to be no conflict of interest, either actual or perceived. If one considers an actual conflict of interest, one would assume that the internal process is not to be carried out by some accountancy or consultancy firm which has worked for the bank before. What about work such firms might take on the future, however? What about the promise of a big contract at the end of the process?

I want to see people who overpaid on their mortgages get the money they overpaid returned right now. I do not want to see them get their compensation now because I want the courts to rule on compensation where court cases are running. They can set the benchmark for compensation, not the banks. We have seen the way these crooks have treated their customers. There are people who have struggled to maintain homes while these mortgages were being overpaid and my fear is that the carrot of a quick few bob now might settle their claims much more quickly than if they were given the option to take their cases before the courts. As we do not have not have class actions in this country, let us get a couple of court cases under our belts and see what the courts deem to be a proper level of compensation. Then let us benchmark claims to that. Let us not allow the banks to negotiate with the ordinary individual who has been struggling for some years while the banks have been screwing them having given them the wrong mortgage rate.

On the collusion element, I want to know why An Garda Síochána are not in every single bank now. Why is the Director of Corporate Enforcement not looking at the directors of these banks? There are people on these boards to represent the public interest. Where are they? What have they got to say on this? Why have they not been hauled in to explain the situation to the Minister instead of bringing in the CEOs?With the best will in the world, the Department of Finance does a good job. These CEOs have treated this country in an appalling way. They lied in 2008 when this country was going down the tubes. They tried to convince the Minister that everything was fine. The Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, sat on the banking inquiry and he gave it his attention every single day. He was there all the time, as were Senator O'Donnell and others, and they have to be commended on the amount of work put into it. The Minister of State knows more about how these banks behave than any of us. We need to be in there and to see exactly how banks define who is owed money. We need to see what companies are assisting them and if there is a conflict of interest, whether perceived or actual, we need to remove companies from the process. Very few companies in this country are big enough to do the type of work we are talking about and I fear that they have all worked for the banks at some stage in the past. I will not delay this debate because I know we have to try to finish things, but that is what I would like the Minister of State to take on board.