Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

What is frightening people is that the Minister is proposing a process that will put 13,000 mortgage holders into the hands of vulture capitalists. It is the form and the record of those vulture capitalists that leave people in no doubt as to what they might face. It is quite pathetic for the Minister to come in here and say that he will ask these vulture capitalists to be nice to the mortgage holders whom they take in hand, when the Minister knows well that the bottom line for these vultures is profit maximisation.

They are the ones who crashed the international economy, for God's sake. Now, the Minister is proposing to hand over the victims of that crash to them again. It is quite incredible. The Taoiseach said on Tuesday that the code of conduct could not be put in as a condition of the sales process and that it might be legally questionable because it would lead to the erosion of the value of the assets from which the creditors seek proceeds. Why would it lead to the erosion of the value of the assets to have the code of conduct attached? Does this not give the game away that the code of conduct would not be followed and does not need to be followed by the people concerned? Mortgage holders would then be left at the mercy of these vulture capitalists.

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