Dublin South West TD, Seán Crowe, has said that the massive jump in profits made by Permanent TSB has come “largely at the expense of the Irish people and especially the thousands of distressed customers the bank threw under the bus.”

The Sinn Féin TD was commenting after PTSB posted a 45 per cent increase on profits in 2018 from the previous year, with profit before tax and exceptional items at €94 million.

Deputy Seán Crowe said:

“PTSB has achieved a massive increase in its profits by throwing many of its distressed customers under the bus. To add insult to injury, the bank indicated to the Finance Committee in 2017 that it does not expect to pay a red cent in corporation tax for the next 21 years, as a result of the Government’s own cosy deal of allowing banks to carry forward 100 per cent of their losses incurred during the banking crisis.

“The shadowy PTSB deal struck last December to offload thousands of its mortgages, including split mortgages, is an absolute scandal. It followed previous sell-offs of mainly but exclusively distressed mortgages to predatory vulture funds. The PTSB split mortgages were classified as non-performing due to incompetence by the bank in designing the contracts, not through any fault of the borrowers.

“The scandal is compounded by that fact that this is a majority publicly-owned bank, which was rescued by Irish taxpayers in a bailout, selling out thousands of its customers to debt vultures. This includes more than 4,000 customers who engaged with the bank in so called restructuring agreements.

“This callous approach will come as a shock to loyal customers, particularly as their bank can make such profits on the difficulties experienced  by many customers in this way, and that despite the fact that the public owns a 75 per cent stake in the bank, it won’t pay a red cent in tax on these enormous profits.

“My Sinn Fein colleague, Pearse Doherty TD, has campaigned for Irish banks to pay tax on their profits and is demanding that the losses that are carried forward be capped at 25 per cent, and for this to be limited to a 10 year period.”

ENDS