Banks must face justice for mortgage chicanery

BANK robbery is said to be an initiative of amateurs, according to Bertolt Brecht. True professionals establish a bank. The remark might once have drawn a wry smile but following the rapacious behaviour of some of our leading lenders, it is more likely to evince a wince. The Central Bank is supposed to be the watchdog protecting consumers and keeping our financial institutions in line. But when the wolves were at the door, it didn’t bark.

It acted more like a gummy chihuahua than the redtoothed bloodhound they deserved.

Yesterday, its governor, Philip Lane, made for a dismal figure at the Oireachtas Finance Committee.

The committee heard how Mr Lane’s office is working with gardaí in relation to the tracker mortgage scandal.

But this falls far short of the all-out criminal investigation, as befits what has been called the biggest financial scam ever visited on the Irish people.

We now know of the suffering, the nervous breakdowns, the broken relationships and ruined lives.

And yet a formal Garda investigation has yet to be launched.

Let us not forget that the cabinet worked into the small hours of the dawn to come up with ingenious new devices to rescue the banks. Why was the same diligence and ingenuity not summoned to make sure that 11 of the 15 mortgage lenders who were operating in the State between five and 15 years ago, and who wrongly took people off tracker mortgages, were called to account?

Mr Lane indicated that the Central Bank expected that more than 20,000 people have been caught in this deliberate fraud. He claimed to have recognised “the hurt and damage the actions of lenders have caused for many borrowers”. He insisted that the Central Bank was “pushing the limits of our powers to ensure affected customers are remedied appropriately”.

The Central Bank has the power to withdraw the licence of banks that fail in their obligations. Only when the lenders are exposed to the same kind of catastrophe as those who bore the brunt of their chicanery can we expect justice to be done.