Fianna Fáil finance spokesperson Michael McGrath, said: “In recent months, a number of mortgage holders who took out their home loans prior to 2006 contacted me after being informed by their lender that they were outside the scope of the Tracker Mortgage Examination and were therefore not impacted by the scandal.
“In particular, certain customers of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) who took out their mortgage pre-April 2006 were informed they were not deemed impacted by the tracker issue because their mortgage contract pre-dated changes that the bank made to the standard mortgage contract early in 2006.”
He said the decision had left customers feeling cheated and powerless to do anything about it.
“Fianna Fáil believes that customers affected by this tracker scandal have been treated disgracefully by their banks and we will continue to apply political pressure on the banks, government and the central bank until this issue is resolved satisfactorily and most importantly, fairly,” concluded McGrath.
Inquiry launched two years ago
The regulator launched an inquiry into 15 lenders in December 2015. Almost 35,000 customers are known to have been either denied a tracker rate or charged an incorrect rate by their bank, with the total number likely to rise further in the coming months.
At the beginning of October, 20,100 customers were known to have been caught up in the overcharging scandal. By December, the banks had admitted to mismanaging the home loans of a further 13,600 borrowers.
The central bank said lenders had only acknowledged that additional customers had been affected after being “pushed” to do so by the regulator.
The number of Ulster Bank customers affected is expected to rise significantly in the coming months after the lender failed in December to provide an update but promised to do so in ‘due course.’
Bank of Ireland own customers hit
In November, Bank of Ireland (BOI) confirmed an additional 6,000 people were affected by the tracker rate scandal, after originally identifying 4,300, bringing the number of customers affected by the tracker scandal to 10,300.
From the €26m originally set aside for compensation, the additional 6,000 customers identified now brings the total cost up to at least €200m – equivalent to roughly 15% of its pre-tax profits for 2016. And of the newly found 6,000 customers affected, 1,800 are from the BOI’s own staff.
The bank has offered customers an unreserved apology and to 20 December last year offers of compensation had been sent to eight out of ten impacted customers.
