REACTION:OPPOSITION PARTIES and housing charities criticised the report of the expert group on mortgage arrears, saying it did not go far enough and describing it as a lost opportunity.
“What we have is a range of proposals that tinker at the margins of the problems but go nowhere near addressing the challenges head on,” said Aideen Hayden, chairwoman of the housing charity Threshold.
“Instead, stop-gap measures are being proposed, which may defer people’s pain to some extent in the short term, but which will not solve long-term problems.”
Aoife Walsh, spokeswoman for the housing charity Respond!, said that the deferral of interest payments will not be a long-term help to most people in arrears as it is based on two assumptions – that income levels will return to 2006 levels, and that unemployment will be reduced dramatically.
“Given events over the past number of days, I suspect there are very few people currently in Ireland confident about the good times returning any time soon,” said Ms Walsh.
A spokeswoman for Free Legal Aid Centres (Flac), which have seen a 9 per cent jump in the number of debt-related calls they receive since 2007, called the recommendations a step in the right direction and welcomed the emphasis placed on preventing repossessions.
“At a time when people may feel overwhelmed and feel that their problems are unmanageable, the recommendations in this report offer an opportunity for an element of control over one of the largest debts a person can incur,” said Flac director general Noeline Blackwell.
The Labour Party’s spokesman on housing, Ciarán Lynch, said he was disappointed the report did not contain more substance.
“While the publication of the report is a positive step – it is ultimately a further deferment of the mortgage arrears problem, and surely comes as a huge disappointment to the thousands of families across the country who were looking to this report for some meaningful relief,” said Mr Lynch.
The Irish Banking Federation, which, like Flac, has a representative on the expert group, welcomed the report.
The federation, which is the leading representative body for the banking and financial services sector in Ireland, said it particularly welcomed the acknowledgment that the level of repossessions here remains substantially lower than in the UK.
The federation claimed the report reflected positively on the current standard forbearance practices by mainstream lenders in Ireland.