Mr. Paul Joyce:

The Personal Insolvency Act needs to be amendment for a start. The Act dates from 2012. There were some amendments in 2015 and others in 2021, but they were very slow to react to the change of equity status of many properties. When the Personal Insolvency Act was first introduced, many properties were in negative equity, which made it much easier to get arrangements through and get the consent of the secured creditor. Now the situation has changed. Many houses have moved into positive equity and it is much more difficult to get the secured lender to consent to a proposal. That needs to be looked at in detail.

A problem that we all know is arising frequently now is that of rent arrears. We are seeing a lot of people who do not own their own homes but who have the same kind of problems as those in mortgages arrears and unsecured consumer credit arrears. Many people in rent arrears also have car loans, credit card agreements and so on. One of the things we underline in our opening statement is that no data are currently published by the Central Bank on a quarterly basis regarding the number of unsecured loans of all types that are in arrears.

MABS knows best because it deals with clients on the ground in its services all the time. It knows best what is happening in trends arising from the cost-of-living crisis. The State is not giving us any data about how to respond and react to this. If one has the data, at least one has a better chance of planning accordingly and introducing the relevant changes to legislation.

On the court process, to our mind, there has been a dubious bargain where the State does not want to see the widespread repossession of family homes but nor does it want to preside over the write-down of loans, particularly the write-down of loans of domestic banks. We have a had a stand-off where these cases come before the courts and the county registrar, who is not a judge or court official, but who has control of the files and tries to engineer, as well as possible in most cases, some kind of settlement that will see the case withdrawn. To be fair, some cases are indeed struck out on agreed terms but some are not and possession orders are granted. It is an ongoing situation, which as the committee can see from the figures, has been going on for a considerable period since the crash. It really started in 2011 and 2012. There is certainly scope for funds to do deals. They do deals at the moment, precisely because they have bought loans at a knock-down. The question is whether there is potential for a scheme outside of the courts where perhaps the State might also contribute on behalf of the taxpayer to resolving some of these long-term cases.