Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that the Minister and the Government will support the Bill in general, for which I thank him and it.

I am delighted to be afforded the time to speak to our party's Bill and commend our spokesperson, Deputy Michael McGrath, for seeking improved regulation of credit servicing firms. What we have seen happen in the past few weeks with some of the financial institutions is nothing short of a Pontius Pilate cop-out. In turn, we have seen the owners of distressed mortgages being thrown to the wolves or, should I say "vulture funds"?

I, too, reiterate that any solution put in place will only be to the benefit of borrowers who have made a genuine attempt to be helpful and co-operative with the lenders within the requirements of the code of conduct. In the Minister's opening delibertations in defending the Government's past performance he played on the reduction in the number of repossessions by financial institutions. Will he clarify if there are other reasons for the drop in the number of repossessions? For instance, it is said Permanent TSB has a difficulty with the enforceability of its mortgage deeds, that is, that bad contracts were drawn up. If they were to be sold to a vulture fund, we would have the worse case scenario. Why? The vulture fund might not be able to go to court to seek repossession on foot of the mortgage deed and would have to sue everyone for the debt due and owing.

We have enough genuine previous mortgage holders who now find themselves without a second chance of ever securing a mortgage again.

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