Govt denies not listening to banking watchdog

The Government has denied claims that it didn't listen or respond to its own banking watchdog.

The Chairman of the Financial Regulator's Consumer Panel Raymond O'Rourke has said customers, particularly mortgage holders, are being "mercilessly fleeced" with interest rates, to rebuild banks' balance sheets.

Mr O'Rourke also believes those who don't have a tracker mortgage are being treated as "second-class citizens''.

Karl Deeter, Operations Manager with Irish Mortgage Brokers, said its not just home owners who have been fleeced.

Mr Deeter said: "Banks only have a certain amount of their loan book, which is the amount of loans they have outstanding, that they can change the prices on and they can't do that with trackers.

"So that means that the small portion that have standard variables are where they have to hit all the increases.

"But really, it is not consumers who are being fleeced, the whole country got fleeced. The Regulator didn't protect this country from a financial crisis. We actually paid them good money to stop this country from going under and they failed that test."