Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To give the Minister an example, James is meeting all his mortgage payments, has never defaulted and has never gone into arrears. Permanent TSB, his originator bank, is State-owned and the Minister is a majority shareholder in it. That bank will not even entertain James in relation to switching. It will not deal with him at all because he has a split mortgage. Permanent TSB actually established that split mortgage and did so in a way that it was deemed a non-performing loan, even though James met every single payment. These people are mortgage prisoners. They have never missed a payment in their lives yet they cannot switch to any bank. Bank of Ireland is the only bank that would actually engage with them and it was not able to cover the full extent of the mortgage. That is only James but there are tens of thousands of these cases. There are people who will be able to switch and they should do so and get professional advice. There are others who cannot because they are in arrears and have serious problems. There are others like James and all the rest who the banks will not entertain because they do not want the hassle of those types of mortgages. I ask the Minister for Finance to say very clearly, as I would, that there is a moral responsibility on those banks that originated these loans to now facilitate loans that can be met moving back into their banks. We have to create a pathway to do that. It is not normal lending; it has to be something unique given the uniqueness of this situation.

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