Readers' blog: Mortgage fiasco shows regulation still lax here
But while there is much justified anger towards the banks, whatâs most frustrating is that here we are again, with regulators not regulating.
Padraic Kissane has said that 30,000 people were denied a tracker mortgage. People donât know their own mortgage. I wasnât aware of my own mortgage, until it was brought to my attention that I, too, had been overcharged, and denied a tracker. What did I do? I advised the bank itself, I then advised the Central Bank of Ireland. I advised the Financial Services Ombudsman. I advised the Government, and I even advised the European Union. I advised everyone and what happened?
Well, the Central Bank told me that they could not action on âindividual complaintsâ â for the record, it wasnât a complaint. I was advising them of the fact that I had been duped and misled. But that didnât seem to matter to them.
The Financial Services Ombudsman just didnât want to know. The Government didnât do anything, either. Even the Data Protection Commissioner didnât do anything. In fact, they told me that it was âall grandâ that my bank had lost some of my original paperwork. The European Union told me that there was nothing to look at here.
So, where do people turn to, if they have been overcharged? Where do they go to? Who will help them? Who will get their money back? Who will fine the banks for their abhorrent
behaviour and sharp practices? The Central Bank? The Financial Services Ombudsman? The Government? The Data Protection Commissioner? The European Union? I donât think so, because the banks can do whatever the banks want to do.
Yet when the banks need âŹ64bn from us to pay their debts, we are told that we have to pay it. Yet, when the banks take, yes, just take, our money, through deceit, our government allows them to do so.
The same government that told us that we had to pay for the banks debts.
So much for consumer protection, and so much for regulation. We are not learning.
