A Mayo Oireachtas member is seeking a temporary and targeted mortgage interest relief for householders struggling to make repayments due to a raft of interest rate increases.
Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh said the “do-nothing approach’ cannot continue.
“We know that the mortgages people are paying in this country are 52% higher than the average EU mortgage rate.
“I appeal the three government TDs in County Mayo to stand up for these homeowners who are trying to find hundreds more every month just to meet their mortgages.
“We have control over what can be done. It has to be done. We cannot continue doing nothing.
“As each month goes by, people realise that these are just empty words and that lip service is being paid to these struggling mortgage holders, who cannot afford to continue with the crippling rates they are being charged, the ten interest rate rises they have had to experience and the significant income shock.
“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael saw off the selling of 78,000 mortgages to vulture funds. We know from the Central Bank that 22,000 of these were not even in arrears.
“They were never in financial difficulty and yet they were sold off without the consent of the homeowners.
“For the past number of years, the parties have supported EU legislation to empower vulture funds and weaken the national government’s ability to protect these same homeowners.
“Now those same homeowners who were thrown to the vulture funds are being torn apart by interest rates of up to 10%.
“We know from Central Bank statistics that the number of homeowners with vulture funds who are paying over 6% has increased drastically.
“The government knows how much they have increased by – about 19% – in the past couple of months.”
