Dear Editor,
The ordinary people of Ireland are drowning in a sea of mortgage debt. At the moment many are struggling just to pay interest only on mortgages that are simply not sustainable in the long term. Ordinary homeowners in Ireland are experiencing hopelessness beyond words.
Irish homeowners are now coming together to respectfully request the Government to intervene in a situation where banks are insisting on 100 per cent for houses that are worth less than half what they were sold for only three years ago. We did not buy houses as investments; we bought houses to live in and to rear our families. There are thousands of empty houses and numerous ghost estates in Ireland. How can it make sense to repossess people's homes only to leave those people homeless and add to the already vast number of unoccupied houses around the country. The cost of this on the Irish economy is incalculable. The madness must stop.
If the Government fail to hear our pleas, then we will not stop until every homeowner in Ireland joins us and ceases to pay their mortgage. As a well known Irish economist said: “If one family defaults on its mortgage, they are pariahs: if 200,000 default they are a powerful political constituency. There is no shame in admitting that you too were mauled by the Celtic Tiger after being conned into taking out an unaffordable mortgage, when everyone around you is admitting the same.”
If we do not owe this action to ourselves, we certainly owe it our children and our children’s children. We may be the “little people” of this nation but that does not mean that we are without courage and intelligence.
If you're one of those people, then you're not alone, there are thousands and thousands of us.
Link up with us on the Irish Homeowners Unite Facebook page or email us at [email protected]
Yours sincerely,
Irish Homeowners Unite
