Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A certain number of what we call vulture funds have two elements to their armoury at this stage. One is they could be the beneficial owners of a considerable loan, while they could also have in their back pocket the power to use one or the other, or both, in order to, for instance, go to court to push the borrower into receivership, which has happened on a fairly regular basis. They could sell the property on the Internet without having to go into a public auction at all. One of the questions we have to ask in those situations is whether it is proposed that the property be sold on the open market. Those funds will say no, in which case they have very strong control over the borrower's indebtedness to them. The loan was not indebted to vulture funds in the first place but to the bank. The bank sold the loan on to the vulture funds and the mortgage holder is now stuck in the middle in a very precarious position.

In the past few weeks, there have been a number of instances where the funds have shown a deliberate degree of aggression in pushing people into receivership and, as a result, to dispose of their property, whether those people liked it or not. This was presumably on the basis that we are now in a rising market and now is the time to do it. I presume the Central Bank is aware of this. If it is not, will it in any way ensure that the vulture funds do not have the most powerful influence over the borrower or that it is fairly and legally constituted?