Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty TD has said the update from the Central Bank amounts to “an admission of failure”.
He said that the report, coming over six years since the scandal first emerged, shows the Central Bank is still trying to get to grips with the scale and gravity of the scandal and that accountability remains the missing word.
Deputy Doherty said the update is a huge disappointment with a date for mid-2017 being given simply as a date by which victims must be contacted.
He said “This scandal first emerged in 2010 and now six years later the Central Bank is still grappling to come terms with the scale of the crisis. In effect, it is an admission of failure. It also fails to mention accountability; which banker or which regulator will be held accountable for this failure and what punishment will be meted out?
“For two weeks, one after another, the banks appeared before the Finance Committee expressing regret and promising to put things right. Yet their actions have not matched their words and even their rhetoric has now been subject to backtracking. In a recent update to customers, Ulster Bank spoke about ‘customers who have been affected by the use of ambiguous and confusing terminology in our mortgage documentation’. Those are not the words of a bank that accepts it was wrong.
“The whole industry continues to insist there was a systems error or a misunderstanding. The scale of the scandal and its occurrence throughout the sector makes it a policy not a mistake.
“Tomorrow, Governor Lane must convince the Finance Committee that the Central Bank is finally getting to grips with this issue and will see it through. I will be putting to him the concerns of customers that the banks are backtracking on commitments made and that they are still relying on excuses to avoid responsibility for what amounts to industry wide theft.”
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