John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My concern is that as these sales come up, as Deputy Pearse Doherty said, AIB is getting down to the more difficult cases and it is easier to sell them on to a vulture fund than it is to continue to drill down into the solutions that might be found for them. I encourage AIB, whatever organisation it is using, to try to expand on the proposal that is there and to engage with that proposal before it engages with a vulture fund. I say that because, like other banks and the Central Bank, AIB tells us that the protections travel with the loan. Very shortly, the witnesses will hear through this committee about the effects that a vulture fund can have on individuals and how they are treated and it flies completely in the face of all of that legislation and protocol on the protections we talk about. It does not work and that it why there is an onus on the banks, regardless of how difficult it is, to continue to drill down into these loans and to determine if people can be kept in their homes and have them pay a sustainable mortgage or rent. That is what I am appealing to AIB to do. I have said it to the other banks as well.

On the non-performing loans, the Central Bank of Ireland and the European Central Bank, members of the committee met these organisations some time ago and we get mixed messages that they are not telling the banks to do this and that this is a target that the banks are reaching of their own accord in an attempt to get their books in order and that there are a lot of solutions that should be examined besides vulture funds. AIB presents it as a very definite stick that it is being beaten with and in fact the ones that AIB says are holding the stick are telling us that this is not the case.