Mr. James Byrne:

My name is Jimmy and I am married with two kids. Here is the background to my story. I have been employed since I left school and with the same company for 20 years, serving the public as a bus driver. I bought my house in 2006, with a remortgage in 2007 for €350,000. I believed all I had to do was work hard and pay off the mortgage. When the crash happened in 2008, we got into trouble, with my wife losing hours and pay and eventually losing her job. At that time, we kept engaging with Permanent TSB and broke free from a fixed rate to a variable rate with its blessing. Eventually, through working side by side with Permanent TSB, we got a split mortgage and the arrears were capped at a large interest rate. We were just happy to keep a roof over our head and agreed with Permanent TSB, as we naively believed they were working in our best interest, despite the numerous phone calls threatening us with repossession.

While in one of the meetings with a Permanent TSB manager, we were told that our tracker rate of 3.25% was not a tracker rate and it was too high. We challenged it with its independent complaints team, who are Permanent TSB employees, and they admitted that they guessed the rate but it was the rate none the less. That is the baseline for our current situation with Pepper Finance. Our rate on a split mortgage now is 7.25%.

On the split, our full mortgage was €350,000 and our agreement-spilt was to warehouse €197,000. Through working hard in 2019, we moved more than €89,000 and, in 2021, moved an additional €37,000 from the warehouse account. That total today is €66,000 and we make full payments on the remaining €273,000 at 7.25%. This was done while we were with Permanent TSB.

We were working with the banks when someone in Permanent TSB judged us as a non-preforming loan, even though we had an appeal in with the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, FPSO. Who makes these decisions? I do not know but there was no way to appeal it or stop it from going to Pepper. By the time we received the notification, it was already a done deal.

At first, I did not really mind my loan transferring to Pepper because we were told that all rights and entitlements would go with it. I know I have a loan to pay and did not really care who I had to pay it to. That was until the rates started shooting up. We tried to get a fixed rate but Pepper cannot do that. I asked them how much they paid for my mortgage but they will not tell me. I asked them who owns my mortgage but, again, they cannot tell me. They said it was because they were sold as a portfolio and not individually priced. I can go into a shop and look at all the tins of baked beans. They are all the same but they are all individually priced.

So how has this affected me? First, financially, which is obvious enough. However, more than that, it has impacted on our marriage because most arguments are about money. We are raising our kids to do the right thing in life but they are at an age where they can see for themselves the strain this is putting us under. Health-wise, let us just say I am on medication for life over this due to stress - high blood pressure.

Now the standard financial statements keep coming - we were dealt with by Permanent TSB as well - asking what I see as personal questions on what I spend on shopping, and I should not be doing this or that. I have four mouths to feed, yet they sit in judgment over things like this. In addition, there are other things, like surrendering my pension documents to them as proof that I can pay off the warehouse loan. If I was on a normal rate, I would not have a split mortgage today. However, that goes back to somebody deciding I was have an NPL. The other option they give is to default on other loans. I have worked hard to try pull my credit rating from the gutter but they want to ensure that is where it goes again.

To remain proactive on the loan with Pepper and get off its rollercoaster, I tried everything to get a switcher mortgage and most of the time failed. However, one bank, namely, Bank of Ireland, agreed in principle to loan us €305,000. That would have been a €35,000 shortfall for Pepper. Everybody here knows Pepper probably would have made a massive profit on that, possibly doubling its money. Only Pepper knows because only it knows what it paid for it. Even the person in Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, I dealt with said it would be mad not to accept. Anyway, Pepper rejected it, and now I am really stuck. My mortgage has gone up more than €700 a month in eight months and there is no end in sight.

I am out of options, except one, which is default or some form of insolvency, and I do not want to do that.

There is no discretionary spending in my household. There have been no family holidays since before the pandemic and there are none on the horizon. Every penny is counted and at this stage, it is being questioned. For the record, people like me have no faith in the political system, as I believe it sees us just as banks and vulture funds do - numbers on a spreadsheet - and it does not seem to have the ability to hold them to account. That was until a brave judge in Tullamore delivered, in my opinion, some form of justice and called out the vulture funds on their tactics and held them to account. That decision gives people like me a sign of hope for the future. We are not running away from our responsibilities. We are not looking for special treatment. We do not want to default on any loans we have. We are just looking for fairness and what everyone else who has a mortgage has - the right to a fixed rate at a reasonable rate.