PTSB is seeking to have a tracker mortgage case struck out by the High Court next week, after settling a wave of related litigation – including with the financial services ombudsman – before putting itself up for sale in late 2025.
It is among a small number of dormant tracker cases that PTSB has sought to bring to an end using a landmark 2025 Supreme Court judgment.
The case before the court next week relates to a couple in South Co Dublin who took out a mortgage with PTSB in 2007 that was linked to the main European Central Bank (ECB) lending rate. They filed a lawsuit in 2018 and claim that they were overcharged for years when they were put on a higher margin over the ECB rate than they were promised. This followed a period when the borrowers opted to go on a fixed rate.
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The couple was not among the groups of customers that the bank deemed to be eligible for redress under an industry-wide compensation scheme overseen by the Central Bank. PTSB had paid out about €55 million under this scheme by the time regulators published their final report on the matter in 2019.
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In seeking to end the long-inactive cases, PTSB is relying on the Supreme Court judgment last May – in the so-called Kirwin v Connors case – which reformed rules for dismissing legal cases due to inactivity. This gives courts discretion to strike out cases after four years of inactivity, unless the plaintiff gives compelling reasons, and even more easily after five years.
“We consider it shocking that our case may be dismissed without being heard,” Denis Madden, the co-plaintiff in the case with his wife, told The Irish Times. Their home is in South Co Dublin. “We have responded to all the bank’s request for additional details and are ready to have our case heard by the court. Our attempts to get the case settled outside of an expensive court hearing have also been unsuccessful.”
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A spokeswoman for PTSB said: “We do not comment on individual cases. PTSB has made an application to the courts for dismissal of a very small number of non-impacted tracker cases where there have been no steps taken by the plaintiffs in the last five years or more to progress their case. It is a matter for the courts to decide whether a case is dismissed or not.”
PTSB’s bid to bring the cases to an end comes as the bank is courting bidders for the bank, with a view to collecting firm expressions of interest by the end of this month.
The bank had drawn a line under a number of important legal cases related to tracker mortgages last year, before hoisting the for-sale sign in October.
In early 2025, it settled several tracker cases that had been represented by Lawlor Kiernan Solicitors. The PTSB declined to comment on the terms agreed.
The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO) also asked the High Court last year to quash two of its previous decisions to include PTSB customers for tracker compensation. PTSB had challenged the decisions in two cases, filed in late 2021 and early 2022, arguing that they had not been victims of the industry-wide tracker scandal.
The FSPO move to scrap its decisions came after the Court of Appeal, in September 2024, set aside two of the financial services referee’s decisions in favour of tracker customers of Ulster Bank.
