Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 22 March 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Proposed Sale of Non-Performing Loans to Private Investment Funds (Vulture Funds): Permanent TSB
9:30 am
Mr. Stephen Groarke:
We had not been and that is one step that might be required in order to cleanly navigate through the rules. However, there are other trip-wires, that were identified in the response to Mr. Matt Carthy, MEP, yesterday, in terms of the unlikely-to-pay criteria. Therefore, it is not simply a matter of the way the legal contract is set up. It is also the term of the split mortgage. The fact that, for instance, there is no interest on the warehouse makes it a so-called "diminished financial obligation", and that is one of the unlikely-to-pay criteria. The fact that the split itself is a significant forbearance is one of the unlikely-to-pay criteria and that trips it in. The fact that the warehouse at the end may require to be settled, either through the realisation of the collateral or through alternative means, means that that uncertainty is also an unlikely-to-pay criteria, irrespective of the way the legal contract is set up. Those are difficult areas to navigate, in terms of both the interaction with the customer and the way the proposition of the split itself is set up even before a legal contract is drawn up.
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