Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with what my colleagues said about vulture funds and mortgages. I ask the Leader to bring the Minister for Finance to the House. There is an elephant in the room, namely, the Bank of Scotland (Ireland), which has thousands of mortgages here and it has been fined in England for its seriously unbecoming behaviour. The bank has left this island with our mortgages and we have not seen it since. A vulture fund now takes its place and nobody knows what is going on and where, how and who owes what to whom. The vulture fund also got massive write-downs and I want the same write-down because I am one of its mortgage holders. I cannot find my mortgage or anything to do with my deeds.

The problem is greater than that of PTSB but it is a problem for us all. The reason the banks do it is because they get away with it. People are very frightened of debt and of going up against the power of banks, but the banks do not have any power if we are not there or we take them on. I mentioned that in the previous Seanad and said people should take their money out of the banks and put it into the post office and a Labour Party Senator told me that I was out of order and that there would be a run on the banks. The Senator could not see an alternative and considered what I said an appalling thing. I never forgot it. However, that is a debate for another day. I would like the Minister for Finance to come to the House because I would like to outline my concerns about Bank of Scotland (Ireland), which left this island with the mortgages of thousands of people and the vulture funds got massive write-downs which were not afforded to us.