Aideen Hayden (Labour)
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I thank the Governor for the clarification earlier on what defines a sustainable mortgage, as well as the clarification on interest-only arrangements being a sustainable solution in the longer term. Many older couples who are in positive equity are deeply concerned at the way the whole situation with positive equity mortgages is going.

I am keen to raise several issues which have not come up so far, specifically in respect of buy-to-let properties. One thing we are all aware of is that the number of people now living in the rented sector has risen substantially. One in five Irish families now live in rented housing and in urban areas the number is far higher. Yet we know there are significant numbers of distressed buy-to-let mortgages. I wish to focus on the issue of receivers. Since 2013, approximately 3,700 receivers have been appointed to buy-to-let properties. I wish to draw the attention of the Governor to a case I had today. A lady received a letter dated 25 April advising her that a receiver had been appointed to a buy-to-let property and that she was to have vacated the property by the end of April. I wish that was an unusual situation, but it is not. The manner in which receivers are treating people who live in buy-to-let properties is outrageous. It shows not only a complete and total disregard for the law but a disregard for human beings for whom these properties are homes.

I am asking the Governor to do two things. It is necessary to have a code of conduct for buy-to-let mortgages, similar to the code of conduct on mortgage arrears for homeowners, which would protect the interests of tenants in those properties and in particular respect the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, which provides for security of tenure.

We have poor data on the scale of buy-to-let receiverships, the number of tenancies that are being potentially impacted and the actions that are being taken on the part of lending institutions. I call on Professor Honohan, as the Governor of the Central Bank, to take this issue seriously. We are at a point at which the market is rising. We are seeing receivers being appointed with the sole intention of sale, and there are rising rents and so forth. This could possibly undermine the lives of many thousands of people who live in rented properties. I do not expect the Governor to respond to this; I am simply putting it to him that this matter must be addressed urgently and something must be done in this regard.

Another issue that I am dealing with on a regular basis is the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. I can see that the code of conduct on mortgage arrears is falling down significantly in terms of people being deemed to be non-co-operative borrowers where there is marital breakdown or a relationship breakdown and one party to the situation is co-operating while the other is not. I suggest that we need to revisit the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, particularly in respect of relationship breakdowns, which are the case in many arrears situations. It is clear that in relationship breakdown situations we have a particular difficulty with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears and people being classified as non-co-operating borrowers.

Professor Honohan referred, as did other speakers, to the interbank aspect and how difficult it is to have parity across institutions. What is of particular concern to me, however, is the treatment of individuals by particular banks, in so far as there is no evidence that people are receiving fairness and equality of treatment. There is no effective appeal process within the banking sector where the solution offered to a customer has been determined to be a sustainable solution. I was particularly concerned when the delegates from the Money Advice & Budgeting Service told us that in more than 50% of the cases they dealt with, what they regarded as sustainable packages for clients in terms of what they were capable of paying were overruled by lending institutions. It was the MABS delegates' view that what people are signing up to as being sustainable solutions are not actually sustainable solutions in the long run and, as such, there is a real necessity to have some element of independence in the process of determining what is, in fact, a sustainable solution.

My final point relates to the role of the Financial Services Ombudsman. We do not have a level playing field between lender and borrower in this country and the ombudsman is not doing anything to address that. I have been flooded with letters from people who are entirely dissatisfied with the lack of any independence in this process. In the course of my work as a solicitor, I never encountered a case where the resolution of a distressed mortgage was what I would call freely negotiated. In fact, in every single case, the legal fees were paid by the borrower, as were the valuation fees, the purpose of which are to protect the bank's interest. It is outrageous that there is no independent financial or legal advice available to people who find themselves in mortgage distress. I am asking Professor Honohan to consider putting in place a bank levy to fund independent advice services. We must have transparency within the financial institutions so that customers know how a solution that is deemed to be sustainable was arrived at. Under the current code of conduct on mortgage arrears, the Governor might be able to find out why an individual was offered a particular solution but the individual cannot access that information. We do not have a level playing field either within institutions or between them, and something must be done about that.