Banking culture

Sir, – The lack of urgency in legislating for, regulating and tackling corporate and economic crime in Ireland remains shocking. The Irish Banking Culture Board was set up by the banks in 2019 in the wake of the tracker mortgage scandal. Tomás Finn (Letters, October 10) notes that he wasn’t aware of its existence but hopes the board “find their voice before we move on to the next demonstration of an ingrained and rotten banking culture”.

Yet despite the existence of the board and its continued statements of contrition, as recently as last year (February 2021) the Financial Services Ombudsman was continuing to highlight continued poor bank behaviour regarding the tracker scandal.

Meanwhile, over 18 months later your editorial of September 29th states: “The weight of responsibility now lies on the Central Bank to hold to account those banking executives – past and present – who were involved in breaches.”

It is more than four years since the Government promised the Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Bill 2022 to deal with such behaviour and the legislation is still not on the statute books. For those so severely and sometimes tragically impacted by the tracker mortgage scandal, it is at least four years too late. – Yours, etc,