Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Bank of Ireland is claiming success because it has restructured quite a lot of mortgages. However, as Deputy Higgins has pointed out, a lot of those people are in pretty miserable circumstances, even though they may just be able to manage the restructuring arrangement the bank has agreed with them. The bank has the whip hand, let us be honest. However, it is not a very good situation and it means that such people are trapped in a pretty awful debt situation for a very long time to come. In addition, if I understand correctly, there are approximately 16,000 restructured mortgages and all of those people would not be in restructured arrangements were they not in some difficulty. Most of that difficulty arose from the bubble period and the consequences of the property crash. In addition, approximately 9.22% of the bank's overall mortgage book is in arrears and that figure is rising, year on year. It has risen from 5.89% in June 2011 to 9.22% this year, which is a very dramatic increase.