Brand new RTÉ documentary series airs: TRACKERS: THE PEOPLE V THE BANKS

RTE have announced that a brand new two-part documentary will be airing tonight which is called TRACKERS: THE PEOPLE V THE BANKS.

The documentary tells the full story of the Tracker mortgage scandal through the eyes of the people most affected as it is billed the biggest consumer banking scandal in the history of the State.

Ireland’s Tracker mortgage scandal would ultimately cost the banks over €1 billion in fines and redress to more than 40,000 affected customers and their families. Yet less than twenty years ago, while many of their customers were being incorrectly taken off their valuable Tracker mortgages, the Government pumped €64 billion of taxpayers’ cash into many of these same banks to stop them from collapsing, according to RTE.

Thomas and Claire Ryan are one family featured in the documentary who had their lives turned upside down because of the scandal.

They bought their family home in Wexford and the Dublin house Claire grew up in as an investment property with tracker mortgages.

In December of 2006 the Ryan's signed up to a three year fixed rate on these loans, in the expectation that they would then revert to a tracker rate. But when this fixed rate period ended, the bank said the Ryan's were no longer entitled to get their tracker rate back.

Thomas Ryan said: "When the tracker was denied to us, and the rises started to kick in, it was absolutely crippling. It was because it was such a crippling amount of money, it was going to destroy us. This put huge pressure on our family on a day-to-day basis. Huge tension came into the house, massive tension. We'd have quibbles that we would never have had, and it was difficult to protect it from the children.

"We didn't know it then back in 2011, we were two years in at that point, but it would take another seven years, before we would see an end to the tracker issue in our house. It escalated so bad that one night I woke up and I had had a stroke in my sleep. I've been very lucky to survive."

Another Irish couple in the documentary, Caitriona and John Redmond, took out a tracker mortgage for €189,000 in June 2003 to buy their family home in Balbriggan, north County Dublin.

In May 2007, they fixed their main mortgage for three years expecting it to then revert to a Tracker mortgage but were refused. Under huge financial pressure, the couple entered into a series of debt agreements with their bank.