Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On Tuesday, we heard from the special liquidator of IBRC that it had secured the agreement of the bidders for the Irish Nationwide mortgages that they would voluntarily adhere to the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, CCMA. Yesterday, the special liquidator appeared before the finance committee. We heard of this voluntary agreement and that there would be no Central Bank oversight, sanctions or recourse to the financial ombudsman. We found out that the voluntary agreement was not even written down. From the perspective of the families affected it is fair to say that the voluntary agreement is not worth the paper it is not even written on.

The Irish Nationwide mortgage holders want to bid on their own mortgages but they have been refused. The rationale supplied by the liquidator and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, for this was that allowing the mortgage holders to bid for their own mortgages could drive down the total sales price, exposing the State to legal challenge from creditors. The sales process is based on a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers which the Minister has refused to release and which the special liquidator has not yet released. However, we found out some useful information about the report from the special liquidator yesterday.

The report recommended a single course of action, which is the one being followed. It did not evaluate different options in terms of the sales price. The liquidator agreed with the finance committee or, rather, told us that sales prices in various scenarios were not provided. In other words, the liquidator has not been provided with advice on what the sales prices would be if mortgage holders were allowed to bid and if they were not. It is still entirely possible that allowing the families to bid for their own mortgages would garner the same sales prices, or even more, than the current process does.

The media has highlighted one example today, that of Mr. Duncan Bannantyne. He offered the special liquidator 97 cent on the euro for his loans, but they were sold yesterday as part of a tranche to Lone Star for 60 cent on the euro, thereby getting €55 million less.

There is still an opportunity but time is ticking. Based on the information that the liquidator provided to us yesterday, he is acting on incomplete advice. In response to a parliamentary question yesterday, the Minister confirmed to me that neither he nor any of his officials had seen the report on which this sales process is based. Does the Tánaiste agree that there is an opportunity to pause the process and for the Minister, his officials or the finance committee to conduct a thorough investigation into whether another process can be designed that would allow the families to bid while making the same returns to the liquidator? We have a small window of opportunity to do considerable good for the many thousands of families that own these mortgages.

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