Bank bosses ‘sorry’... now Ministers want action
TWO more bank chiefs have apologised to customers who were wrongly taken off their tracker rates and who overpaid on mortgages by thousands of euro.
AIB boss Bernard Byrne and Ulster Bank chief Gerry Mallon both met Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe yesterday.
After their meetings, which lasted an hour each, both men emerged from the department and offered apologies to their customers.
AIB’s Mr Byrne, when asked by the Irish Daily Mail if he would apologise, said: ‘Well, as we have done before, we met with the minister, we had a very constructive meeting, we outlined to the minister the work we have undertaken to date and the progress we have made in addressing the customers who have issues.
‘We have apologised several times before and I apologise again for what has happened on this in respect of tracker customers.
‘We listened to what to what the minister has to say and we are going to make a statement [today] in relation to that. We are fully committed to working in line with the framework that exists and we are confident we will be able to make progress again.’
And Ulster Bank CEO Mr Mallon said: ‘We have met with the minister and we have listened to what he had to say. We apologise une- quivocally for the mistakes the bank has made and I would like to reiterate that apology: we are genuinely very sorry. Our number one focus as a bank is putting this right and that is what we will do. We will make a statement.’
Bosses from Bank of Ireland and KBC – the two lenders lagging behind in terms of providing compensation – have not yet offered apologies, despite official requests from the Mail.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has called on the Government to investigate how all 11 banks did the same thing to their tracker customers at the same time.
He said: ‘It defies all credibility that 11 institutions would have acted independently. No credible explanation has been given as to how all this happened in all the banks at the same time. That needs to be pursued. The banks have been pathetically slow at resolving these issues.’
Addressing Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney, he also said: ‘I am sure the minister would agree that the banks essentially stole people’s money. They caused enormous damage to people’s lives and a great deal of distress to families. We know that 102 customers have lost their homes as a result of this particular scandal.’
Mr Martin said the Central Bank ‘would have had some indication of this as back as far as 2009 or 2010 – although it was not systematic at that stage – and it took it until 2015 when we had an investigation because it was beginning to satisfy itself that this was systematic’.
In response, Mr Coveney said: ‘I want to give a very clear message to the House that the minister [Paschal Donohoe], supported by the Government, is going to see this through. He will be making a lengthy statement to the House [today] in the context of his meetings this week.
‘We will be expecting comprehensive statements from all five banks, addressing how they intend to bring this saga and scandal to an end and ensure that people get their money back as well as get the appropriate redress that they are due. The damage that has been caused is, unfortunately, a further example of banks not acting in the interests of the public but acting in their own interests.’
Mr Coveney said the Minister for Finance ‘has made it clear that he has not been prescriptive in terms of what the Government will do until such time as he gets clarification from the banks this week in terms of what they intend to do’.
However, he added that Mr Donohoe ‘has also made it clear that if the Government is not satisfied with the response this week from the banks, there will be a further Cabinet meeting dealing with the detail of the options that are available to Government in that regard’.
‘Caused enormous damage’
WE have now had public apologies for the behaviour of their institutions over the tracker mortgage scandal from the bosses of Allied Irish Banks, Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank. Such apologies are wholly appropriate and must therefore be welcomed.
But what, you would have to ask, is preventing the CEOs of Bank of Ireland and of KBC from issuing their own similar heartfelt apologies? We need to hear them say it. Those whose lives they decimated deserve nothing less.