Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the leaders here today on raising the very important issue of distressed mortgage owners and the fact that they are terrified and worried. I want to give the Kerry perspective, because I was asked to raise this very important issue here today. I appreciate the response that the Taoiseach has already given. However, it is a most serious issue. We must think of these people, working every day of the week trying to pay their mortgages. Vulture funds can come along and buy their loans at a massive write-down, but the mortgage holders cannot benefit from that. If this Government, and the Opposition working with it, want to be remembered for doing one positive thing, that would be protecting those people. There are businesspeople with mortgages that they desperately want to pay. As the Taoiseach said earlier, they are respectable people. All they want to do is to pay off their loans, but they do not want to be robbed by these vulture funds. If the legislation is not prepared, it should be drafted and introduced, and it should be watertight to protect these people.

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