Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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154. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will consider criminalising the act of overcharging on a tracker mortgage with a stiff financial penalty for banks (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18215/17]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank is the statutory supervisory and enforcement authority for regulated financial services providers in Ireland, and it is also responsible for protecting the consumer of financial services. As such, it is the independent responsibility of the Central Bank to ensure that financial institutions and individuals are held accountable for failings where there is sufficient evidence to support such action.

In respect of the Tracker Mortgage Examination, the Central Bank has advised that it will take appropriate supervisory action, including enforcement action against lenders and persons concerned in the management of those lenders where relevant, to ensure that fair outcomes are achieved for consumers where applicable regulatory standards are not met. In the area of tracker mortgages, the Central Bank has issued a reprimand and imposed a fine of €4.5m on Springboard Mortgages Limited and it has indicated that two other tracker mortgage related enforcement investigations are currently ongoing into Permanent tsb and Ulster Bank Ireland.

The Central Bank also has statutory reporting obligations to the Garda Síochána, and other agencies, where it suspects a criminal offence may have been committed by a supervised entity. The Central Bank takes these obligations very seriously and complies with them on an on-going basis as appropriate. The Central Bank has indicated that, as its investigations proceed, it will keep matters under constant review and that, guided by the evidence, it will make reports to other bodies as necessary.