Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have been raising this now for a long time as households were thrown to the wolves, including by the Minister's party and Fine Gael. We now have mortgage prisoners who are facing interest rate hikes that simply do not exist in the other retail mortgage market. The Ministers were told this. My legislation, which would have prevented the sale of these loans to vulture funds, was blocked. I made it clear on Committee Stage that vulture funds would hike up interest rates. Let us look at the data that the Central Bank has given me. Only 2% of mortgage holders in mainstream banks are paying 5.5% or more. In vulture funds, on the other hand, a quarter of all loans are paying more than 5.5% and some of them are paying up to 10%. When I asked the Central Bank how many could switch before the BPFI came out with its criteria, the bank said the figure was possibly 54,000. After the BPFI came out with its criteria, the Central Bank is now saying the upper limit is 27,000 and that would be subject to other credit checks. For example, those who missed a direct debit payment in the last while would be excluded.

What was agreed after the meeting simply does not cut the mustard. There is a responsibility on those banks, and indeed on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael which facilitated these loans being sold and people being thrown to the wolves, to facilitate a pathway back to main street lending. That would mean these loans could get out of the grips of the vulture funds and back into main street lending. We see from all of the data that even though interest rates have been increasing, they are significantly lower than what is happening with vulture funds. Does the Minister not agree that action has to be taken to right this wrong? What is the Minister for Finance going to do about this?

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