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Dáil
‹ Questions on Promised Legislation

Tracker mortgage victims

Summary

Pearse Doherty says the tracker mortgage scandal continues, with thousands more victims identified and banks resisting the Central Bank. The Taoiseach says he has not yet read the report but notes the Government is also advancing white-collar crime legislation.

Reading the tracker mortgage examination update report this morning, one can only be convinced that, despite all the apologies from the CEOs for what they have done to their own customers in wrongfully taking their money from them, overcharging them and denying tracker rates to them, behind the scenes they have continued to fight the Central Bank tooth and nail. In the past 12 weeks, despite the fact that all the final figures were supposed to be in last year, we now find that the Central Bank has identified 3,400 more tracker mortgage victims. It is very clear that the culture within the banks is not changing and will not change, and we need to recognise that. It is therefore time to introduce serious legislation that will hold individual bankers to account. We have produced some of that legislation. There are two pieces before the committee, that is, class action legislation and another piece which would allow for the jailing of bankers who lie to the Central Bank. My questions to the Taoiseach are if he will allow the money messages to these pieces of legislation so they can proceed, and if he will bring in his own legislation that will see real white-collar crime dealt with in our financial institutions and hold individual bankers to account in respect of their actions.

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Leo Varadkar The Taoiseach Fine Gael

I have not had a chance to see the report yet. It was published at 12 noon and I have been in the Chamber since then. However, I did answer a question earlier on the legislation the Government is bringing through in respect of white-collar crime.

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