Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First of all, that is not true. It was not the case. On vulture funds, until last week those people were not able to even go to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, a legal provision that everybody else had until I pointed it out to the Minister and forced that to be changed.

The Minister said he would not mind if his mortgage was sold to the vulture funds. He made that statement to try to guarantee or give comfort to people that everything would be okay. I put it to him that there are 7,000 homeowners who are being charged an interest rate of over 8.5%. There are 100,000 homeowners who are being charged an interest rate of over 6%. They are all with the vulture funds. Why did this happen? Because the Minister, and Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, allowed this to happen. They blocked legislation that would stop this happening. They told people they would not be better off. The Minister should talk to the family that has now been paying €12,000 more per year on their mortgage because that loan was sold off to a vulture fund. That is the change. That is the difficulty. To tell them they have the same rights and entitlements is not the issue here. The are being screwed royally by these vulture funds, and the question is: what is the Government going to do? Is it going to continue to sit back and allow tens of thousands of Irish consumers to be fleeced in this way?

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