Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE CENTRAL BANK has published its final report on its examination of the tracker mortgage scandal, which saw tens of thousands of customers overcharged by their banks.
Lenders have paid €683 million in redress and compensation to impacted customers and 98% of the more than 40,000 affected customers have now received offers.
There were 99 homes lost as a result of lenders’ failings as well as 216 buy-to-let properties.
Lenders included minimum payments to customers who lost properties of €25,000 for buy-to-lets and €50,000 for private dwellings. The average redress and compensation paid in respect of loss of ownership of homes due to lenders’ failures is €194,000.
The Central Bank also required lenders to set up an independent appeals process to deal with affected customers who were dissatisfied with any aspect of the redress and compensation offer they received from their lender.
To date, 10% of affected customers have made appeals. The lenders’ independent appeals panels had awarded customers €7 million at the end of May 2019.
The majority of upheld appeals arose from awards for additional detriment due to personal customer circumstances of which the lender may not have been aware at the time the original redress and compensation was awarded.
Today the Central Bank said after “extensive and robust supervisory challenge and assurance work to ensure lenders identified groups of customers affected by tracker failings”, the supervisory phase of the examination is complete.
Since the start of the examination, 13,000 impacted accounts were identified by lenders. A further 20,000 were identified following a Central Bank challenge to the lenders. Some 60% of affected accounts arose from contractual or transparency failings.
‘Immense distress’
The Central Bank completed its first enforcement action in relation to the examination at the end of May, fining Permanent TSB €21 million for its failings. Enforcement investigations against all the other main lenders are continuing.
Derville Rowland, Director General, Financial Conduct, said the scale of lenders’ tracker mortgage failings was “industry-wide, causing immense distress and damage to affected customers and their families”.
“It required an unprecedented regulatory response in the shape of the tracker mortgage examination, the largest, most complex and significant consumer protection review the Central Bank of Ireland has ever undertaken.
Through the examination, we required lenders to identify those affected and pay appropriate redress and compensation. Additionally, we continue to pursue lenders through our enforcement investigations. The outcome of our first enforcement action – which resulted in the largest fine imposed to date by the Central Bank – reflects the gravity with which we view lenders’ tracker failings.
“The examination revealed the unacceptable damage that misconduct can cause to consumers up to and including the loss of their homes and properties in some cases. Our message today – to all the firms we regulate – is very clear: Where firms fail to protect their customers’ best interests, our response will be robust and the consequences will be serious.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Another cover up incoming, either that or it’ll be dragged on so long there will never be a conclusion. Remember all the investigations into Fine gael donor Denis o Brien and Actavo/siteserv and the dealings and debt write offs he received from certain banks? Still ongoing about 5 years later!!
Evidence based? The poor girl was let down by incompetent staff. End of.
@Brian O’Connor:
I don’t think that it was the nursing staff who were to blame to be fair, didn’t one nurse repeatedly try to get her seen by a doctor?
@Costigan Family: i was myself waiting on several occasions in ED 16+ hours…. I am yet to see one busy nurse….try retail or hospitality…. Its the management thats fails miserably… Poor girl…. May she rest in heaven…
@Costigan Family: it is not the overworked doctors’ fault that the HSE is chronically underfunded. There are one thousand vacant consultant posts because of the crap conditions offered by the HSE.
We seem very likely to have a general election this year
I will vote for the party that pledges to fight the monster that is our state bureaucracy
From the department of “social protection” to the HSE these unfeeling blobs make life a misery for huge numbers of people most of whom are on low/modest incomes and in difficult circumstances
If the word “republic” is to have any meaning then the state should be on the side of citizens. Instead it seems to be constantly stonewalling or fighting its citizens in long expensive court cases.
Time for real meaningful change
@Gerry Kelly: We accept that the state is not competent enough to provide food for example (collectized farms never worked) or consumer good etc why oh why then do we think that public sector beauacrats can run a health care system. Long lines, scarcity, misallocation of resources, no accountability, service users being seen as a burden, or a nuisances-all of these things are a result of state beauacracy. The state can fund healthcare, ideally through social insurance, but I shouldn’t actually run the system. Healthcare can be delivered to a high quality without long waits e.g germany, Switzerland etc.
The people in the Midwest were promised a centre of excellence by the HSE when the a&e was closed in Ennis and Nenagh. Brendan Drumm, Mary Harney and every Minister and HSE CEO since have let the people down. Hang your heads in shame.
.. they just don’t care, not the first time or last time.. will happen again..
Do you want the truth or an enquiry?
Civil Servants do not appoint people to find truth.
I’m afraid to think what I would do if this was one of my family members.
@Paul Kavanagh: Could not agree more Paul. I cannot as a parent imagine begging, pleading for help for my child as she lay dying before my eyes.
If the ministry for health, the ceo of the hse and the ceo of the hospital involved had the slightest most minute shred of dignity they should have resigned the minute this appalling tragedy happened.
Like you said I would seriously consider taking matters into my own hands if this happened to my child.
The stardust case had a tribunal of inquiry in 1981 that was a cover up. In 2009 the government published a redacted re-edited report from Mr Paul Coffey however in 2017 after the retired Judge McCartan review he stated looking at the evidence both the Keane review and Coffey review were wrong.
I not surprised about the terms of reference because government refuses to own their fatal failures and deny natural truths and justice. Her family should walk away.
@Liam Foy: It was found in the enquiry that the two top doctors on the ward that night were more interested in broken bones and minor injuries than treating the most seriously ill, I do think that says it all! They should be demoted or struck off.
“There are insufficient doctors to care for the numbers and acuity of patients presenting in the timescale expected by the triage system, the hospital and the community”, the report stated. Blame management and the Minister for Health, not the overworked, burnt out, doctors.
I must say from my inter action with Medical Staff in a major Dublin hospital, the care has been fantastic.
have your say