Today I wish to raise the tracker mortgage scandal. How the banks have treated those who were entitled to be on a tracker rate is absolutely horrendous and morally reprehensible. There seems to have been systemic abuse of customers by banks and this seems to have been endemic, across the board and nationwide. Banks seem to have been acting in an orchestrated fashion and collectively they have deprived thousands of customers of their contractual tracker rate and have placed others on the wrong rate. If customers treated banks in this way they would be trodden down with High Court writs and untold grief in the blink of an eye. It is not acceptable that banks can treat customers in this way. Thousands of families have been overcharged, many have lost their homes and immeasurable anguish and distress has been caused to them by the banks.

My party colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, has been raising this issue for many years now and has stuck with it.

It was only when customers who have been affected presented last week to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, and many radio shows were contacted that the Government Press Office decided to take this on board. We are only now seeing a response from the Government. The Government has been in power since 2011-----

Not correct.

-----and has done absolutely nothing-----

And the homeless.

-----to address this matter.

Please allow the speaker order and if there is somebody to be corrected that can be done at a later stage when the Leader responds.

The €5 million communications unit has taken heed of callers to "Liveline" and of victims who presented to the finance committee. What we really need to see now is action and not more rhetoric. We need to see action by the banks and we need to see the Government ensuring that pressure is being put on the banks to ensure that these customers are compensated and that they are given adequate redress.

I would like to welcome back Ibrahim Halawa who has been detained for four years without a fair trial. I would like to commend the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and his family, particularly his sisters who have been campaigning tirelessly over the past few years. I would like to give him a céad míle fáilte home. The Fianna Fáil group is delighted to see him home. Go raibh maith agat.