Timing is everything: Tracking a scandal

The victims of the tracker scandal found themselves at the mercy of the banks when it was raining cats and dogs, writes Michael Clifford.

LUCK separates a lot of us in how we managed to negotiate the really bad times. One strand of luck that came my way was timing in when a fixed-rate term on the mortgage for the family home came to an end. That was in early 2006 when the banks were falling over themselves to throw as much money as possible at all and sundry.

I can still remember the phonecall. A nice woman from the financial institution told me about the end of the fixed term, and advised that we take up this thing called a tracker. I hadn’t a clue, but an innate suspicion prompted caution.