HOW HBFI BOSS SPOKE UP FOR EBS IN SCANDAL

ORIGINALLY a business analyst with the Construction Industry Federation, Dara Deering has now spent more two decades immersed in the banking world.

In the Celtic Tiger years she was responsible for residential mortgages at EBS as the State bailed out the building society to the tune of billions.

In that role she spoke frequently in the media about the prospects of the housing market and defended the financial institution when controversies arose.

One of these involved an EBS product called Family First which encouraged parents to borrow to fund a deposit so their children could then fund a mortgage with the bank.

But there were triumphs too and in 2005 she led the EBS mortgage division as it was named ‘best mortgage provider of the year’ at the Moneymate/Investor Magazine awards.

Ms Deering was also employed in a senior position with EBS when it became embroiled in the tracker scandal investigation by the Central Bank.

In June this year the Central Bank reprimanded and fined EBS €13.4m for ‘a series of significant and long-running failings in the treatment of its mortgage customers’ that had begun in 2004.

According to the Central Bank, EBS ‘failed to properly manage its mortgage services to customers, resulting in breaches of customers’ consumer protection rights and/or contractual rights’.

After leaving EBS in 2012, Ms Deering became director of retail banking at KBC before she was appointed as HBFI chief executive in September 2019.

Ms Deering and the HBFI declined to comment when asked about her role at EBS.