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Peter Mathews in full flight Screengrab from Oireachtas TV

Watch: "It's all gone mad" - 8 moments from this week's 'grilling' of the bankers

The bankers were given targets to tackle the mortgage crisis, but no-one was happy with the measures they took to reach them…

SOME TDs AND Senators were back at work early this week. But there was no easing back into the job for the members of the Oireachtas Finance Committee; their task – to ‘grill’ the executives from four banks on their response to the mortgage crisis.

Executives from Bank of Ireland, AIB, Ulster Bank and Permanent TSB all appeared before the panel to answer questions on whether they had reached targets set down by Government to have proposed sustainable solutions for 20 per cent of mortgage holders in arrears by the end of June.

All had – some by greater margins than others, but the politicians were surprised at the level of solutions that had been achieved as a result of legal action being launched; almost 15,000. They were even more surprised when told by bank officials that this was within the rules set down by the Central Bank; Governor Patrick Honohan will now appear before the Committee later this month to answer questions on the issue.

TheJournal.ie watched all of this week’s sessions so you didn’t have to; the four sessions lasted from Tuesday afternoon to Thursday morning, and featured questions on everything from bankers’ salaries to the plight of the former Priory Hall residents.

Up first, was David Duffy of AIB who almost (but not quite) asked Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin whether he wanted to ‘step outside to talk about this’…

1. “If it requires us to have the discussion outside this meeting room we’ll do it”

There was some steel behind Duffy’s tone as he fielded a question from Doherty about the level of legal letters that the bank had written:

2. Richie Boucher gets testy over his €843,000 salary

It wasn’t quite on the same scale as Jeremy Paxman’s infamous interrogation of Michael Howard, but things got a little tense in the Committee on Wednesday morning when Labour’s Arthur Spring asked Bank of Ireland CEO Richie Boucher seven times to answer a specific question about his salary:

3. “It’s like being in a maze”

Committee members weren’t happy with the figures being provided by Boucher and his BoI team. Fine Gael’s Kieran O’Donnell said the lack of breakdown on restructures being offered to mortgage holders was not “good enough”, and that it felt like being trapped in a maze:

4. Peter Mathews lets rip, Part 1

The (now Independent) Fine Gael TD from Dublin South Peter Mathews has a bit of a reputation for making long speeches in the committee room, and he was in fine form again this week, accusing the banking sector of having “abandoned its prudential principals”. “I don’t know if there was a question in that,” the slightly irked Committee Chairman Ciarán Lynch noted afterwards:

5. Peter Mathews lets rip, Part 2

“I’ll give some grace,” Lynch told Mathews on Wednesday afternoon as he asked for clarification on how long he had to speak to Ulster Bank’s top officials. It’s another ten-minute-plus declamation taking in the board of directors, lack of communication with mortgage holders and call centres in Limerick. “It’s all gone mad,” he tells them:

6. “You can give me the cold-faced, straight-laced banker answer…”

Dublin Bay North TD Aodhán Ó’Ríordán pressed officials for answers on Priory Hall during the meetings. Some gave more positive answers than others. Ulster Bank’s Jim Brown merely repeated the mantra that all cases were being reviewed “on a case by case basis”:

7. Thomas Byrne tries to sum it all up in under sixty seconds

By Thursday morning, the extent to which the banks had relied on the inclusion of legal letters to householders to get them over the line and meet their targets had become more than clear. Fianna Fáil’s Thomas Byrne attempted to sum up the problem late-on in the last of the sessions, with PTSB’s Jeremy Masding:

8. “We’re poking at a lightly forming scab over a deep wound that continues to fester and fester underneath”

Socialist TD Joe Higgins used some graphic language as he made his own attempt to sum up the situation in the mortgage sector as the Thursday session came to a close.  ”You’ll be at their graveside with your hand out”, he told the PTSB boss:

(All videos: TheJournalVideo and Hugh O’Connell)

Like politics? Then why not ‘Like’ TheJournal.ie Politics on Facebook to keep up to date with all that’s happening in and outside of Leinster House.

Also: Ulster Bank CEO: ‘It costs money to live in a house’… TDs: ‘We know’…

Read: Bank of Ireland has addressed 53 per cent of defaulting mortgages >

More: AIB says 4 per cent of mortgage holders are in ‘strategic default’ >

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15 Comments
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    Mute nicola lawless
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    Sep 8th 2013, 8:30 AM

    ‘You’ll be at their graveside with your hand out’ ne’er a truer word spoken, but what joe forgot to mention is that the system is also pushing some of them into their graves. Sad, desolate times.

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    Mute Floodzie
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    Sep 8th 2013, 8:21 AM

    Bank shares are up this week. Just about says it all…

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    Mute rotund jocularity
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    Sep 8th 2013, 8:16 AM

    Pure pantomime.

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    Mute Pat O'Brien
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    Sep 8th 2013, 9:07 AM

    Peter Mathews “rant” was great. He’s one of the few who are sticking it to these bastards. And fu#k the chairman for his snide remark, it simply shows his ignorance. Mathews simplified much of this crisis in that statement and people should hear that.

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    Mute Martin Desmond1
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    Sep 8th 2013, 8:43 AM

    I’d like to grill a few bankers, face down in a fire pit!
    Not those nice staff who do their best at work every day like you or I but these high 5 slapping gangsta rudeboys in disguise as bob dobolinas! Hardest part would be waiting for the coals to turn fully white before dunking them d!cks.

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    Mute Declan
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    Sep 8th 2013, 9:22 AM

    This “we sent letters out” child like answer to meeting targets should be rubbished by noonan next week and they should be back in next month to answer again about what real work they have done. No ?

    The real truth here is they won’t write debts down because they are waiting for the market to rebound a bit. No chief exec wants to accept that debt on his shift. It will affect his job, his bonus, and as important the shares they privately own which are up since the collapse.

    Sadly the fact that these banks are state owned would appear to mean sweet f**k all….,

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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Sep 8th 2013, 10:21 AM

    So after the “grilling” what happens? Do the committee make any recommendations on maybe those in the banking sector not performing loosing their jobs or is that the end of the pantomime until next time they are called? Otherwise it is a waste of time and money.

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    Mute Golden Bryan
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    Sep 8th 2013, 9:09 AM

    What? No Little Stevie Donnelly? The master of populist rhetoric must be losing his touch. The Fan Club will be very disappointed.

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    Mute Quincy
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    Sep 8th 2013, 9:25 AM

    I don’t agree with that comment about Steven Donnelly. He’s not my local Td but anytime I hear him speak he comes accross as a decent hardworking Td with good morals and values. If half of the people in government were like him we might not be in this mess.

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    Mute Golden Bryan
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    Sep 8th 2013, 11:27 AM

    Yup, Little Stevie is on the radio now using his favourite words “horrendous” and “horrific” and saying things like “There’s something wrong with the country …….”, then he pauses like he’s waiting for applause.

    But he has no solutions. He’s just a waffler.

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    Mute Emlyn Grant
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    Sep 8th 2013, 11:40 AM

    Surely the soloution is everyone that bought a house between 2003-2008 gets there mortgage reduced by 20% Thus making people’s mortgages affordable again and for those who are paying there mortgage they will have money to put into the local and national economy.

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    Mute Tom Hourigan
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    Sep 8th 2013, 9:02 PM

    Boucher and Co will continue to treat law makers with disdain and arrogance as long as law makers continue to permit these bankers to receive salaries that are multiples of the salary of the highest ranked law maker in the state. These bankers must, understandably, feel superior and invincible and it must be undignifying for them to have to be accountable to a committee, where the aggregate salaries of any 7 or 8 members would only approximate to that of the highest paid banker. Cut their salaries to sensible levels and observe how cooperative they will suddenly become. Not a problem if they don’t want to work for less, others can be hired.

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    Mute Eric De Red
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    Sep 8th 2013, 11:23 AM

    Political hypocrisy! This state, yet again, faces an existential crisis and the politicians expect bankers (no less) to get them off the hook and to make the decisions that they themselves will not. Bankers will do their job, which in this case is to get as much of the money they imprudently lent out back. To expect otherwise is extremely naive. Politicians are once again ducking the hard decisions. Why? Because to fix this problem we need money and that is already being shipped back to Frankfurt by the tonne. If politicians want the mortgage issue fixed then they need to fix it, not hope for others to fix it for them.

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    Mute SilentFugitive
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    Sep 8th 2013, 12:29 PM

    This was a show for the proles. The TDs knew it, the bankers knew it and the proles knew it.

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    Mute Johnny Mannion
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    Sep 10th 2013, 8:20 PM

    Grilling,hardly

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