“My Party has consistently argued that we need a 24-month moratorium from the time that mortgages first go into arrears, before repossession proceedings can be taken, where a borrower makes reasonable efforts to meet their obligations to pay the mortgage on a principal private residence,” stated Dáil Labour candidate Ann Phelan.
Councillor Phelan was responding to the weekend findings that the number of homeowners who have fallen into serious mortgage arrears has almost doubled in the last year, indicate that this is a problem that is fast becoming a crisis.
She said that some 33,000 mortgage holders are in arrears for three months or more, but that this figure actually understates the extent of the problem because it doesn’t include, for example, accounts in arrears for 60 days or less, nor does it include people who have come to some sort of arrangement with their lenders, but who are still in difficulty.
The fact that mortgage interest rates are being artificially inflated by lenders, purely to bolster their own revenue stream, is particularly hard to stomach.
Carlow/Kilkenny’s Labour Candidate stated that unfortunately the response by the Fianna Fail/ Green government has been completely inadequate. The report by their Mortgage Arrears and Personal Debt Expert Group, published recently was long on aspiration and short on detail.
She said that to address this crisis in a meaningful way there’s a national leadership need to give serious consideration to ideas such as:
- The reform of existing supports by for example, liberalising mortgage interest supplement by decreasing waiting times and increasing maximum mortgage.
- The introduction of a mortgage rescue scheme whereby the moratorium period would be extended to two years along with dealing in a legislative way with matters such as penalty interests on arrears and reform of bankruptcy laws.
“It is almost two years since the financial markets went into meltdown, and while the Government has rescued builders, bankers and developers, it is clear that ordinary home owners are still at the back of the queue as far as Fianna Fail and the Greens are concerned,” Councillor Phelan concluded.
