Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Darragh O'Brien has made a great play for the removal of the banks' veto in the personal insolvency process, and he is right to do so. We know the banks shovelled out money very irresponsibly to people during the boom years. In the case of mortgages, loans of 90% or more of the value of the property were given. The cost to the banks of borrowing money is approximately 1.5% at most, and the EU average on loans is 2.09%. I will be making a case later for the involvement of the Credit Review Office in order to introduce an element of independent overview to the issue of setting interest rates.

There is a good case to be made for setting a maximum rate of 2.5% or so for non-tracker customers. The level of defaults is huge and the banks, in their own view and in the interest of the taxpayer and so on, have chosen to issue repossession orders in an effort to get customers to engage. In many cases, judges have taken a very different and more independent view in these matters, for which we can be very thankful. I hope to see more engagement by the banks with their customers. I am not arguing for the large-scale writing off of debt. The reality, of course, is that very little, if anything, has been written off on residential mortgages compared with development loans and so on.I am not making an argument-----