Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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31. To ask the Minister for Finance his plans to launch a public inquiry into the tracker mortgage scandal; the actions he plans to take to ensure persons who lost their homes and paid too much in monthly payments are suitably compensated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44705/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank’s Tracker Mortgage Examination is focused on ensuring that lenders provide fair outcomes for all customers impacted by their failings. Lenders’ reviews are required to be conducted in accordance with the Central Bank’s framework for completion of the Examination (the “Framework”) issued in December 2015. The Framework requires lenders to identify all impacted customers and to address customer detriment in line with the Central Bank’s Principles for Redress. Steps being taken by lenders to address customer detriment identified during the course of the Examination include putting customers on the correct interest rates (rate rectification) in order to stop the immediate harm caused to them and providing redress and compensation.  In that regard, the Principles for Redress provide that the compensation must be fair, clear and reflect the specific circumstances of each impacted customer. 

Three lenders have commenced payment of redress and compensation to impacted customers. The Central Bank expects that two of these lenders will have progressed the payment of redress and compensation to the majority of the customers they have identified as impacted by year-end.  The Central Bank continues to engage with and challenge the remaining lenders in respect of their redress and compensation proposals and expects that they will be in a position to commence providing redress and compensation by year-end.  To end September 2017, the aggregate figure for redress and compensation paid to customers arising from tracker issues is €163 million.

Arising from its tracker examination the Central Bank is pursuing enforcement action against lenders.  One enforcement investigation has concluded and a monetary penalty of €4.5 million was imposed on Springboard Mortgages Ltd.  The Bank is currently pursuing enforcement investigations in relation to permanent tsb plc and Ulster Bank Ireland DAC. Also two further enforcement investigations into other lenders are in train, and in its recent appearance before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public, Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach the Central Bank indicated that further enforcement investigations can be anticipated.

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. However, decisions in relation to this would be solely a matter for the Central Bank and the independent criminal investigation and prosecution authorities.