Family home repossession must be stopped - Mac Sharry

Senator Marc Mac Sharry and a group of concerned citizens have submitted their proposals to the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, on methods to prevent against the repossession of family homes.

“The repossession of family homes by financial institutions creates tremendous social, psychological and economic issues for families and places further financial pressures on the state. With the ESRI conservatively predicting that 35000 families will fall into arrears next year action is urgently required ” said Senator Mac Sharry.

Senator Mac Sharry continued: “Our objective is that the repossession of a family home due to mortgage arrears should not be allowed to happen without a detailed independent analysis of repayment capacity, an examination of the quality of the original mortgage application and consideration of a range of alternative actions”. “We must legislate to determine a robust criterion to protect those families who resulting from the economic crisis find themselves genuinely unable to pay, offer alternatives and pursue those who can pay but due to wilful neglect refuse and do not pay”.

“We have come up with a number of solutions to allow the borrower time to address the debt including,

• Interest Only payments

• Extend the mortgage period

• Rent back property scheme

• A Moratorium

• Restructure terms of mortgage

• Maintain fixed interest rates for longer period

The Senator concluded, “With further budgetary adjustments and reductions to be made and the inevitability of interest rate rises in the medium term, it is imperative that we act now to provide a legislative basis to protect families faced with the burden and worry of losing their homes. I believe our proposals provide informed suggestions for legislative improvement in this regard.