Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

From the point of view of the customer, these arrangements are quite depressing.

What prospects are there for those who, having lived with the stress from the difficulty of sustaining a mortgage, now face a situation in which they are shackled to the bank and just paying interest? Term extensions also lead to extra burdens of interest. We put this question yesterday to the other bankers and Mr. Boucher's counterpart in AIB had the nerve to give us a lecture on moral hazard as it pertains to owner occupiers, those people who are stuck with exorbitant and extortionate mortgages as a result of blatant speculation in building land and house prices. Why will the bank not consider a write-down for owner occupiers to the real value of their homes and a recalibration of mortgages on a monthly basis to the equivalent amount? That would remove massive amounts of stress from those who are trapped in this nightmare and release badly needed funds into the domestic economy, shops and services, which would help to regenerate the gutted domestic economy with all the downsides of mass unemployment. Has Mr. Boucher thought about this or discussed it within Bank of Ireland or with the other banks?