Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We put forward a proposal in the those terms. I told the Minister that we could introduce baselines whereby it would not kick in until a certain point. I refer, for example, to trackers and so on. The Central Bank is not going to intervene with regard to these interest rates, which will continue to go rise over the coming period. This relates to the €6,000 or €7,000 a person interviewed on RTÉ earlier in the week referred. His mortgage repayments are going to increase again next month, and will do so again if we are to believe the comments made by the chief economist of the ECB. There is a breaking point in respect of all of these cases.

It appears that the focus of the Government and the Central Bank, which has a duty here, should be to ensure that the code of conduct is sufficiently robust that when people fall into arrears, they will have all their protections, etc., in place. The key thing is that none of these families wants to fall into arrears. The reason these pressures are being put on them is primarily because of the war in Ukraine. There is an issue of fairness in the way we are supporting businesses with the €1.2 billion and the way we have supported the hospitality sector with lower VAT rates, households with regard to energy costs and renters. There has to be something for mortgage holders because they are experiencing the highest increases of all. Am I right in saying that nobody is experiencing similar increases? Is MABS seeing energy prices or food prices increase by €7,000 per household per a year? This is the single biggest shock and single biggest bill that inflation and the war in Ukraine have brought to any family. People have been left to paddle their own canoes. I am sorry; I am digressing again. We need to try to find solutions, that is one solution.

This is my view of the former Governor's statement. The code of conduct on mortgage arrears applies to everybody, but the fine print was never explained to people. Those involved knew that fine well as they were making their statements. However, they have not offered solutions. That is the problem. AIB, Permanent TSB and Bank of Ireland can do the same thing that Pepper Ireland does. They could have passed on all of these interest rate increases to their customers. We could have done nothing to stop them. We have a sense that they are not going to do that, however, because they want our custom and there is a bit of competition, even in the current climate. These guys do not want our custom because they are not offering us these solutions. That is the problem and that was always the difficulty.

Mr. Joyce made a point in terms of FLAC's From Pillar to Post series. From Pillar to Post Paper Two: Ten Years and Counting - Conclusions From a Decade of Attempting to Resolve Family Home Mortgage Arrears in Ireland, states:

In our view, regulated lenders should be obliged to work to find an alternative repayment arrangement with borrowers whose capacity to repay is impaired by loss of income due to Covid or other significant factors beyond their control, and should not be allowed to sell such loans on to third parties until they have demonstrated that every effort has been made to agree a sustainable restructure. for this purpose, there should at the very minimum be a compulsory time period during which the existing lender must work with the borrower to reach an accommodation before a loan can be sold on.

I am not in any way negating the fact there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other customers whose loans have never been sold but who are also feeling the financial pressure, and we are only focusing on those that are most acute because they are up at 7.5% and going to 8%. How realistic do the witnesses believe it is to strengthen the code of conduct on mortgage arrears and what Mr. O'Brien was talking about in terms of the suite of options that are there? It has been talked about before. When Shane Ross’s crowd of Independents went into government, they made a statement that they had this agreement that all banks would be forced to offer certain types of arrangements, but that never materialised.