Central Bank Governor, Philip Lane, appeared before the Finance Committee today as part of the Committee’s discussion of matters relating to the banking sector.
 
During the hearing, Committee chairman John McGuinness questioned if the Central Bank was up to regulating the banks.

Sinn Fein's finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty questioned the Governor about the tracker mortgage scandal where over 8,000 mortgage accounts were overcharged because they were wrongly denied low interest tracker rates by lenders.

Mr Doherty asked the Governor to clarify whether the figure of 8,200 mortgage accounts affected by this issue included customers whose accounts were with Permanent TSB and had been part of a redress scheme at that bank, Bank of Ireland customers who were identified as far back as 2011 and a number of updates recently provided by other lenders.
 
At the hearing, Central Bank executive Ed Sibley suggested Bank of Ireland may have restored 5,000 customers to trackers, and not 2,100 as Bank of Ireland has stated. Fianna Fáil's Michael McGrath suggested the total number of mortgage holders denied trackers may be 15,500.

Prof Lane clarified that Bank of Ireland was stopped taking trackers from 3,000 customers by regulators. Prof Lane said he made an error by disclosing this. The trackers were not removed after the Central Bank intervened.

The total number who had trackers taken off them wrongly across 15 lenders is likely to be 15,000, the governor said. Sinn Fein's Pearse Doherty accused banks of theft from their customers over the tracker denial issue according to the Irish Independent.
 
Source: www.businessworld.ie