Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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92. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of staff that Permanent TSB employs directly or under contract who are solely or primarily working on resolving issues relating to the Central Bank investigation of its handling of tracker mortgages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16500/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy may be aware Permanent tsb Group (PTSB) established a Mortgage Redress Programme (MRP) in July 2015 to remediate and compensate 1,372 mortgage customers who exited early from a fixed or discounted rate period and, as a result, lost their future entitlement to a tracker.

In September 2015, PTSB established a dedicated Mortgage Product Review Group (MPRG) to review its legacy mortgage product suite and identify any instances where the contractual terms and conditions of customers are not being fully honoured by the Group; in particular, in relation to tracker mortgages. In December 2015, the Central Bank of Ireland ('CBI') announced its intention to require all mortgage lenders to conduct a broad examination of tracker mortgage related issues. Details of this Review (the 'CBI Tracker Review') were provided to PTSB (and Springboard) by the CBI in December 2015. While the CBI's required scope is broad (in terms of timing and customer types), it is consistent with the root and branch product review which is being carried out by the MPRG.

I have been informed by PTSB that including 3rd parties and Independent Oversight, they currently have c.170 people working on these Tracker mortgage related projects.

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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93. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of staff that non-State owned banks employ directly or under contract who are solely or primarily working on resolving issues relating to the Central Bank investigation of its handling of tracker mortgages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16501/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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My Department does not have information on the number of staff that non-State owned banks employ directly or under contract who are solely or primarily working on resolving issues relating to the Central Bank investigation of its handling of tracker mortgages. However, the Central Bank has set out a Framework for conducting the Tracker Mortgage Examination and given its scale, I understand that significant resources are being deployed by lenders to complete the examination.

The provided by the Central Bank on their website in April indicated that the planning phase of the Examination has now been completed and lenders have submitted plans including arrangements around governance and reporting to the Central Bank. Lenders have now moved to phase two which is analysing and identifying impacted borrowers. The update provided by the Central Bank confirmed that lenders have appointed external independent third party assurers to oversee this work and to ensure that the review is being carried out in line with the Central Bank's requirements.

The Central Bank have stated that is not in a position to provide information on the number of staff employed on this investigation by each lender as the level of resources being employed by each lender will vary at any one point in time depending on a range of issues.

The Central Bank will be providing public updates on the Tracker Mortgage Investigation through their web-site throughout the examination and I understand that the next update is due to be issued at the end of July.