Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I met a woman a number of years ago now, towards the middle of the crisis, when I was an MEP, who was facing mortgage distress and crisis. She was about my age or slightly younger. She was being harassed and harangued by the bank for the mortgage arrears in every way possible - emails, phone calls, and so on. Despite all her explanations about the conditions that were giving rise to her inability to pay, the bank would not stop. As a consequence, out of stress, her hair had fallen out even though she was a young woman, younger than I was.

It brought home to me the devastation wrought on people's lives by the behaviour of the banks in pursuing people in this manner and that of vulture funds in particular. There was an article in thejournal.ie a few months ago which summed it up:

It’s the effect of the whole thing that has the biggest impact on your life. It causes an awful lot of stress. The thoughts that you are going to maybe lose your home. It hangs over you.

This is a consequence of Government policy. It is also a consequence of Fianna Fáil policy, going back, in terms of the creation of the bubble.

The guiding principle of the Government and of the establishment political parties in this country is to ensure the banks are returned to the private sector in order that they can be run for profit in the interests of big business, a process that is well under way. Therefore, despite being in public ownership, they were given the green light to go after those in arrears with vigour. Any rules to reign them in or temper their profit maximisation amounted to nothing more than more voluntary, light touch codes. They were facilitated with the relaxation of the Central Bank mortgage arrears resolution process. The green light was given to go ahead. Added to that was the selling off of mortgage books, including residential mortgages, by publicly owned banks to vulture funds.

We now have 50,000 mortgages held by vulture funds, or 15% of the market. These funds are not charitable institutions. I remember the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, talking positively about the role of vultures in cleaning up the economy, etc. They sum up capitalism, which is red in tooth and claw and merciless in terms of extracting every last single penny or cent of profit. There is a couple with small arrears whose mortgage was passed to a vulture fund, again quoted in that article in thejournal.ie. They say that:

[Th]e vulture fund just keeps on grinding, and grinding and grinding away at you, because they know the ordinary husband and wife don’t have the machinery to deal with it ... All they want is to see how many zeros they can add, all at the expense of a family ... They don’t make phone calls, they don’t do emails, they just keep sending threatening letters in the post.

If we want to sum up modern-day capitalism and a modern-day banking system run for profit, that is what it is.

We are in favour of this Bill. It would shift the balance slightly in favour of the householder and those who hold the mortgages, as opposed to the banks. It would be a small counterweight. Like Deputy Boyd Barrett, I would be completely dismissive of the constitutional argument.

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