Mr. Brendan Burgess:

For a mortgage to be sustainable the borrower must be able to pay the standard variable rate of interest on it, and that can be extended to stage two. If the borrower can pay the standard variable rate of interest on their unsecured debts, those debts are also sustainable. If the borrower cannot pay the standard variable rate of interest on their mortgage and there has to be some sort of deal on their mortgage, the unsecured creditors should be taking a bit hit. When one has a measure of sustainability, one can see what one would do with the unsecured creditors. If a person has a mortgage of €300,000, a house worth €200,000 and owes another €50,000 to the credit union, if the bank has to write down unsecured debt to make the mortgage sustainable, the other unsecured debt should be written off. Against that, a bigger problem for the credit unions at present is they are being asked to write off debt under the Central Bank waterfall scheme in order that the borrower can repay capital on their mortgage. That, to me, makes no sense. There is no reason a credit union should have to write off debt to make a mortgage sustainable when that definition of "sustainable" means the mortgage has to be paid off by the age of 65 or so.