Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Irwin and Mr. Byrne. They are powerful advocates on behalf of themselves and their families and also on behalf of tens of thousands of people who are unfortunately in a similar position to them. There is a term that has now become more familiar to many people, which is mortgage prisoners. They are people who have been sold to the vulture funds who are not able to escape from their claws or grip. Ms Irwin mentioned that she is a private individual. I know many people who reach out and give details on the interest, the additional cost and so on. It is a big step to take to go public, be the face and all of that. I want to commend Ms Irwin and Mr. Byrne on that. Mr. Byrne believes that many people just look at numbers and so on. I can understand that.

A number of years ago I tried to introduce legislation to make sure people's loans were not sold to vulture funds. It was the no consent, no sale legislation. The Central Bank had a code of conduct for 20 years saying that mortgages should not be sold unless there was consent from the individual. I wanted to put that into law. It was blocked by some political parties. We are now dealing with the aftermath of that. In my view, because vulture funds do not have a long-term interest or any further interest in loans, student loans or agricultural loans, they only want to get as much as possible from people's debts, so they were always more likely to increase interest rates over banks.

I will start with Mr. Byrne. His mortgage has gone up by €700. Is that compared with last year? Is that the case?