Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that mortgage arrears are coming down. I do not have time to go into the details of the solutions that Mr. Masding is offering. I have concerns about the legal area on which there is a heavy focus. I received a letter which contained important comments. Mr. Masding has continually said that he is proud of the bank's mortgage arrears procedures, and he has made similar comments today.
We have discussed letters when Mr. Masding has appeared before this committee. I have received a letter from a couple who are not young. Both of them lost their jobs and went into re-education. One is working and the other hopes to qualify soon. They are in mortgage arrears and have left their house which has been on the market since 2009. Mr. Masding's bank wrote to them in November 2013 offering them an assisted sale despite the fact that the house was on the market since 2009. Mr. Masding's bank has continually engaged with them at the wrong address, despite being notified by them and the Money Advice & Budgeting Service that they had moved to a different part of the country. The bank wrote to them acknowledging that they told the bank a year ago, in August 2013, that they had changed address. Despite this, the bank only put that in its system in September 2014.
These people wrote to me because they are quite frustrated by what happens at these committees, including the suggestion that mortgage arrears are being dealt with appropriately. The letter stated:

The bank has not been engaging with their customers. Our situation was let go until our home went into negative equity. They were alerted of our impending demise at every step of the way. At no point did anyone engage with us or suggest anything other than to send in standard financial statements to our local branch, while never offering a solution - obviously, ticking boxes for them, showing that they are dealing with the situation when they clearly are not. I am attaching the most recent letter from them, along with my response. [The person goes on to say] We are standing at the abyss. It takes everything we have to try to move forward with our lives every day. I am beginning to feel like it is slipping away from me., I fight back for so long and then lose the energy or will, and it takes all I have to respond to their incessant, meaningless letters. This is quite difficult for me to write.

I suggest to Mr. Masding that he needs to be more careful in terms of his language and how the bank is dealing with these individuals. These two people are not alone. I know that a lot of progress has been made by Mr. Masding's bank and he has acknowledged that he did not have the right procedures, but there is a long way to go yet. This is not the way to treat people who saved the institution that Mr. Masding is now heading.