‘Government on your side’, Varadkar tells victims

PEOPLE cheated out of money or their homes in the tracker mortgage scandal should know that the Government is ‘very much on their side,’ the Taoiseach said yesterday in Paris.

‘This has gone on too long and we’re going to make sure that it’s sorted out,’ he said.

Mr Varadkar said this would become apparent today when Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe gives details of the sanctions the banks face for their embezzlement.

He also said that all the banks involved should ‘absolutely’ apologise. And he defended the Central bank and its governor Philip Lane, despite claims that they have been toothless and slow to act.

He said: ‘There is an investigation under way by the Central Bank and I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of that.

‘There is a divergence among the banks. Different banks are taking a very different approach to this and while you could impose global sanctions on all banks, where we are now is seeing which banks are admitting that wrong was done and admitting that people were wronged. Up to 20,000 people and their families were wronged and they must always be at the foremost of our minds in resolving this.

‘We want to see, over the next couple of days and over the next week or so – and certainly between now and the end of the year – which banks accept that what they did was wrong and compensate people appropriately and then we can take further action.’ People who were forced to pay more in their mortgage payments than they should have paid and some people had lost their homes, he noted.