Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The problem is that policy is not working. Anyone on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and any Deputy will tell the Tánaiste that. Bank of Ireland is acting in a completely different way. As an example, I am dealing with a family in Wicklow, which cannot make full capital and interest payments. They can make partial capital payments with full interest and their business is beginning to grow again. Bank of Ireland has written to them saying it is not offering any sustainable solution. It is taking them out of the mortgage arrears resolution process, MARP. They must make full capital and interest payments, which they know they cannot do, or the bank will repossess their house. I have gone through the detail of this case. If this family was with AIB it would offer them a split mortgage, reduce the capital payments, and if the payments were not fully covered when they retired it would offer them a debt for equity swap. The family would stay in the house, get on with raising their kids and growing their business. That is what should happen and would happen if they had borrowed from AIB but they did not. They borrowed from Bank of Ireland, which will evict them and pursue them for the residual debt so that it can continue to drive up its share price, and its shareholders can continue to cash in. That is the reality on the ground and it has to stop.

Richie Boucher made it crystal clear to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform that he will not play nice in the way the Government wants him to. The Government could stop this in a heartbeat. All it has to do is say it has solutions that AIB and various other institutions are using, and tell Bank of Ireland it must use them too.

I urge the Tánaiste to answer my question, which is so important for the many families Bank of Ireland is destroying. Will the Government not ask Bank of Ireland to play nice but insist it apply the same level of debt solution as other banks? It is a huge potential win for the Government but much more important, for thousands of families around the country.

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