Ireland’s bankers have learnt little from the crash
Central Bank findings show lenders still regard customers as an afterthought
Almost a decade after the banking crisis, the trust of bank customers has been shaken again by the tracker-mortgage scandal. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
You would not expect a conversation over a pint in a sleepy Connemara hotel after a day of fishing to be earth-shattering, but one such fireside chat foreshadowed to me the trouble Anglo Irish Bank was in, not long before its downfall.
Almost a decade ago, in September 2008, an octogenarian Galway businessman who I had met only briefly before had asked a mutual friend during our conversation if he would mind giving us some privacy for a few minutes.