The Human Cost

The financial harm reached far beyond the cases where homes are being lost. Nearly sixteen thousand accounts were affected, and some hard pressed families were forced to pay tens of thousands in overcharged interest while under threat of losing their homes if they did not meet Bank of Ireland's persistently incorrect payment demands.

Families depleted savings built up over years. Others relied on loans, credit cards or family support to cope with falsely inflated repayments. For many, future plans, from education funds to pension contributions, were destroyed to compensate for errors made by Bank of Ireland. In some cases, the harm continues.

The emotional toll is harder to measure but no less real. The Central Bank of Ireland recorded repeated accounts of customers who lived for years under strain due to the bank's actions. Bank of Ireland failed to disclose to customers who contacted them seeking to sell their properties or requesting redemption figures that they may be impacted under the Tracker Mortgage Examination and due redress and compensation.

Tragically these customers made uninformed decisions relating to their mortgages, causing the loss of properties, including the family home.

The delays in acknowledging harm allowed it to accumulate. Customers repeatedly contacted the bank long before the regulator intervened only to be told their documents were clear, that their tracker mortgage rate entitlements were lost, or that they were correctly classified.

The Central Bank of Ireland’s published decisions show how this harm played out in real lives. Disturbingly, The Central Bank found that Bank of Ireland’s Court of Directors made decisions about whether disputed groups of tracker customers were affected “in the absence of key material information” necessary to make an informed decision under the Tracker Mortgage Examination framework.

In more recent cases, Bank of Ireland’s current Board appear to be trying to distance itself from continuing tracker-related harm by characterising individual cases as legal disputes.

Where the Board has been placed on notice of severe impacts of overcharging, an significantly overstated redemption position and the subsequent loss of a family property, it has a responsibility to ensure that the matter is independently examined and that further harm is stopped.

Failure to do so raises serious questions about whether the governance and cultural lessons identified so starkly by the Central Bank have genuinely been learned and the extent of current Central Bank oversight of Bank of Ireland. Some of those harmed by Bank of Ireland note the comments of Taoiseach Micheal Martin who said “The banks essentially stole people’s money. They caused enormous damage to people’s lives and a great deal of distress to families.”

Speaking in Dail Éireann in the past year, Tanaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris TD has acknowledged that lenders’ tracker-mortgage failures caused significant distress and, in some cases, “devastating consequences for customers”. Tracker scandal victims say Bank of Ireland’s current Board must explain how its continued handling of a case involving an overcharge, threats of repossession, the sale of a family property under duress and serious continuing harm is consistent with the public statements of the Taoiseach and Tanaiste or with the lessons the bank claims to have learned.