‘You’d do the same again’: bank boss under attack over trackers
THE CEO of Permanent TSB should be ‘ashamed of himself’ over the bank’s handling of the tracker mortgage scandal, a TD said yesterday.
PTSB chief Jeremy Masding appeared before the Dáil finance committee for the grilling yesterday, and was attacked by chairman John McGuinness.
The Fianna Fáil TD said: ‘You should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. If I was interviewing you for a banking licence, I wouldn’t give it to you. You haven’t changed one bit and if you got the chance you would do exactly the same thing again.’
Mr McGuinness’s stern words came after it was revealed that the bank included its own staff, equipment and legal costs when it previously told the committee of what it had paid out on redress and compensation to tracker customers.
The committee heard in 2016 that PTSB had already paid out €80million in compensation to customers, and anticipated the final cost being €145million. But last night PTSB admitted that only €57million in total had been paid out – €45million taken illegally from customers and €12million in redress.
Mr Masding said the bank had previously believed it was being asked its full cost, including the salaries of those deployed to address the scandal and the development of assessment technology.
Mr McGuinness told Mr Masding: ‘You’re the biggest company man I have seen in here in a long time.’