Dr. Cormac Keating:

The Central Bank has done much work on the reasons there are so many people in so many different levels of arrears. There are people in arrears and then there are deep arrears. There are probably around 30,000 in arrears of more than 720 days. The key finding is that people get themselves into this terrible situation by effectively putting their heads in the sand and not engaging with their lenders or with other services that could provide help to them. We examined this and thought how we might be able to change it and incentivise people not to do it. One of the suggestions we make in the paper is to introduce this idea of a suspended repossession order so that when one goes to court and the case is kicked down the road repeatedly, the judge instead gives an order to issue a suspended repossession order. This focuses the mind very quickly and causes the consumer to get in touch with his or her lender and hammer out a deal, and deals are being hammered out. There have been probably 120,000 restructured mortgages in recent years. Banks are willing to engage. We need to get the lenders to engage as well.