Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over recent years, banks have been selling off loans, including family homes and buy-to-lets, to vulture funds at knock-down prices. To enable these funds to do their thing, the Government has designed a tax system that incentivises the funds to buy even more loans, which the banks are more than happy to offload despite the dire consequences for the borrowers. Many vulture funds are now structuring their arrangements in such a way that they pay no tax at all in this State. Ulster Bank has a particular fondness for selling loans on to vulture funds. Last year it sold a portfolio of loans known as Project Scariff which was worth €1.6 billion but was sold to a vulture fund, called Promontoria Scariff. It consists of about 3,600 family homes and 2,900 buy-to-lets. A company called Cabot Financial Ireland is administering these loans and its actions to date in dealing with borrowers have been absolutely disgraceful. A number of weeks ago, it wrote to its buy-to-let customers who were behind in mortgage payments and demanded that the arrears be cleared within 30 days. I have received correspondence from a number of those mortgage holders which shows that they were in very small arrears, in some cases less than €3,000. The statement they got from the vulture fund demanded full payment, not just of the arrears but of the entire loan. They are being given seven days to make the payment, and to come up with hundreds of thousands of euro in some cases. Some of the borrowers have serious health concerns in their households and the vultures which are sending the letters know about these concerns but they continue to issue the letters and the demands without any regard to what is happening. They are paying no regard to the fact that arrears are less than €3,000 in some cases and they are not facilitating any arrangements with borrowers. It is not just borrowers who are affected by this. As they appoint fixed-asset receivers, the tenants in these houses will be turfed out onto the street and they need somewhere to live. Two sets of lives are being destroyed as a result of this policy and it is utterly chaotic for the families involved. It runs roughshod over any level of common decency in the way vultures and banks should be dealing with customers in arrears.

All of this is a direct consequence of Government policy, which is to roll out the red carpet to these leeches.

They can do this, and will do it, because they know that the Government will do nothing to stop them. That is why they are playing hard, fast and very loose with these customers. Indeed, the record shows that the Government will do everything to facilitate them.

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