Mortgage holders ‘should be worried’ by sale of IBRC loans

Every mortgage holder in the State, regardless of what bank they are with, should be "very concerned" about the sale of the IBRC loan book to unregulated foreign funds which strip "vital statutory protections" from borrowers, the Fianna Fáil ardfheis has heard.

The party’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath warned that “if the Government is prepared to sell-out the IBRC mortgage holders in this way, then there’s absolutely nothing to suggest they would intervene if any other bank in this country decides to sell its mortgage book”.

He described as “nothing short of disgraceful” the Government’s actions in the sale of some 13,000 mortgages of the former Irish Nationwide, now IBRC.

Two foreign funds which have agreed to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct are the final bidders in the sale by the special liquidator KPMG for the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

But Mr McGrath said “they are prepared to allow the special liquidator to sell the mortgage book to an unregulated foreign fund which is answerable to nobody.

“The effect of this will be to strip mortgage holders of vital statutory protections including a legally binding code of conduct on mortgage arrears.”

The Cork South-Central TD said: “This means that if a person with a mortgage misses even a single mortgage repayment, then under the terms of this mortgage agreement they have this fund will be perfectly within its rights to immediately demand the full repayment of the loan and to initiate legal proceedings for the repossession of that property.”

The Government’s answer to the crisis “has been to give more power to the banks, to dilute the protections afforded to borrowers and to make it easier to repossess family homes”.

He said: “Even when targets were set for solutions to be put in place the Government allowed the banks to completely manipulate the process to such an extent that more than 60 per cent of the so-called solutions offered by the banks involved issuing letters threatening repossession of the family home.”

Fianna Fáil “believes that an independent mortgage resolution office is the best way and is urgently needed to deal with the mortgage crisis in an impartial way and to give families in desperation some hope for the future”, Mr McGrath said.

He also told delegates that while people were “rightly tired of the current Government blaming everything on Fianna Fáil, we will be just as bad if all we did was criticise the current Government”.

He said that was why they were coming up with new ideas and publishing policy papers and legislation.

He said the Irish economy was like a patient that had come out of intensive care “in deep shock and with a long road of recovery ahead”. That road “is uncertain and key risks remain”.

He pledged that Fianna Fáil would contribute to that recovery in “every way we can”.

Fianna Fail as a political party, should not be “prisoners of the past”.

He said the local elections would bring forward a new generation.

To win back the trust and support of the Irish people they had to be imaginative and bold in their ideas.

“Let’s raise the bar. Let’s not accept the mediocrity of this Government. Let’s challenge ourselves to be an even better and more effective Opposition and let’s challenge this Government to do better for the people of this country.”