Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand the Senator's point. The core objective of this Bill is to prevent a case getting to that point. It is to have a system in place that gives the borrower a fighting chance of holding onto his or her home. It gives the independent office the power to make the final decision. Outside of the Insolvency Service, there is the code of conduct on mortgage arrears and the banks are required to implement the mortgage arrears resolution process, MARP, programme, but it is the lender who makes the final decision as to whether the mortgage is or can be made sustainable. The lender makes the final decision as to what restructuring option, if any, will be offered to the borrower. There is a lack of consistency. We all have been involved in individual cases, most of which ended fairly well, where the borrower has got some restructuring arrangement put in place but others have been inexplicable cases that looked to be strikingly similar where I have had full oversight of all the facts. There seems to be an inherent inconsistency, not only between different lenders but sometimes even within individual lenders, as to how cases are being dealt with. That is not good enough. What the Insolvency Service has succeeded in doing is bringing a degree of consistency in the treatment of cases that have come before it.

The frustration is that ultimately the lenders can just say "No". While we have an appeals mechanism, many people are just worn down and they do not take their case that far. They give up and in many of the cases where we see voluntary surrender or voluntary sale, they have not even gone through the appeals system. They have just had enough. It is dragging on for far too long and people react and deal differently with stress and anxiety.

Undoubtedly, the system needs to be accelerated and we need to give an independent office the final say. The Government's position currently is to let the court have the final say on it. That is a very adversarial system. It is very lengthy, very drawn out and very cumbersome. It is currently completely broken because of the High Court decision in regard to locus standi. That is the core objective. The whole issue of the sale of loans, vulture funds and so on are all related but it is not directly related to what we are doing.