Mr. Padraic Kissane:

The first thing they are prepared to do is enter the market. The one difficulty they have with a domestic mortgage is that the term of the original loan will dictate how long it can run. If some arrangement can be put in place it will relate to the original loan. As I mentioned, the difficulty with many of the owner-occupier mortgages that are being sold is that they might have had a forbearance arrangement directly with the bank heretofore which would have been interest only, or part capital and some interest. They are losing dramatic time in that, but now that it has been shoved out to the vulture fund, the original term of the contract stands and so all this time is lost. I gave the example of a 0% loan at €1 million, which is a repayment of €50,000 over 20 years and €100,000 over ten years. That is what is causing a huge issue here.

Concurrent with that are the increasing values in the properties. A good loan is being sold at approximately 50% in the better cases and below that in the worst cases. That is a generalisation because I do not know for certain. I know David Hall has done a significant amount of positive work here. I suppose the collective group is asking whether we can start to think outside the nine dots here.

These organisations are coming into the market to make profit. According to the websites, Goldman Sachs vulture funds collected €465 million in distressed Irish loans last year alone. The facts are there. They are not here for any benefit of the customer. The difficulty in all of it is the "don't know" factors relating to a home or a farm. I would connect farms to this because the shame, embarrassment and "don't know" factors of that are not being captured.

I hear many people talking about the moral hazard of people not paying their debts but I have not come across this. I do not know where all these strategic defaulters are. I raise these questions. Who would strategically default on their home? It would be the stupidest thing someone could do. Some people are in severe difficulty and will have to sell their homes, but that should be a finite percentage that a state should be able to carry. However, under the current proposals, thousands of homeowners will suffer repossessions, which no state will carry, yet these companies will fly off with the profits from this because they are just selling the property.