Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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One of the terrible features of the current situation in respect of interest rate hikes - whatever about the Central Bank’s macro objectives, as it were, to prevent overall inflation – is that a huge number of people with mortgages are struggling to keep a roof over their head or, even worse, have had their mortgages handed over to vulture funds. These vulture funds are charging exorbitant interest rates in excess of the ECB rates but are using the ECB interest rate hikes to justify further increases. These people are taking a hit of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000 a year. Is there anything more that can be done or that the Central Bank can do to prevent that sort of hardship and unfairness? Our view is that we should, certainly when it comes to residential mortgages, impose some sort of interest rate cap because everybody can see that the banks are making a fortune out of this situation but mortgage holders are getting hammered. The witnesses might say that it is not sustainable over the long term, but many things are being done over the short term to deal with this particular crisis. Surely, it would be reasonable to protect a group of people who are getting crucified and getting themselves into bigger debt and more unsustainable positions. I do not know if the witnesses have any comment at all on the particularly nasty, as I would see it, behaviour of these vulture funds and non-bank lenders that are charging absolutely exorbitant rates for no other reason than they can, it seems.