Bankers still haven’t learned from errors

LAST week, when asked by this newspaper to apologise over the tracker mortgage scandal, the banking chiefs failed to do so. Yesterday, Permanent TSB’s Jeremy Masding did reiterate previous apologies made over his organisation’s involvement in the scandal. It would seem to most people that this was the very least he could do, given what his bank had inflicted on so many people – yet the other finance bosses summoned to meet the Minister for Finance failed to issue an apology of any kind.

Such behaviour only serves to illustrate that the banking elite still don’t get it.

Nothing from yesterday’s meetings demonstrates any specifics in terms of a commitment to act now for the betterment of their betrayed customers.

You might argue that those specifics must be worked out and agreed to down the line, but that doesn’t have to be the case. And it certainly doesn’t preclude anyone from saying sorry.

For, at this stage, the question of wrongdoing is not at issue. We all know the extent of the banks’ wrongdoing and the maelstrom that their cavalier tactics unleashed upon so many people.

As well as simply being the right thing to do, a fulsome apology from each of the bank chiefs would have indicated that they recognise that there is a serious problem with how the banks have been operating in this country for far too long. It would have been an acknowledgment that they operate as part and parcel of a culture that is abhorrent, that should never have been tolerated, and that, crucially, must now change forever.

The failure to address it head-on by apologising and promising a new way forward is beyond disappointing.

Indeed, it is difficult to believe that real lessons have been learned and that, in a few short years, this country will not once again be dealing with the fallout from yet another banking scandal.