Tracker retribution

GIVEN their history of bad practice over the past 15 years, no one should be surprised that banks have been slow to compensate those affected by the tracker mortgage rip-off.

All the major banks, around about the same time, put in place policies that cheated tens of thousands of people out of their trackers, switching them to more expensive variable rates instead.

Their actions to remedy this have been beyond lax; indeed, in some cases, the responses to requests from the financial regulator for information have been bordering on the contemptuous. And the watchdog, as revealed in yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail, has decided it is toothless to enforce any sort of sanction on banks for cheating people before 2013.

Now, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is hauling bank chief executives in front of him. We’re glad action is finally being taken, and it needs to be made clear to the banks that there are consequences for these actions.

Many of those affected by the less favourable mortgage rates lost their homes because they fell into arrears, and ended up in court, before seeing their properties repossessed. It is hard to understand why the faceless, heartless pen-pushers who forced these people to the brink are not facing their own day in court, and the maximum possible penalty for what at best was financial chicanery, and at worst maybe even outright fraud.

After he threatens the bank chiefs next week, Minister Donohoe should forcibly warn the executives that if they fail to take heed, and do not compensate those affected within a fixed period, the consequences will be dire not only for the institutions but for the individuals who sanctioned this too.