www.finegael.org

Many families have been left with a huge amount of personal debt and suffering from negative equity following the collapse of the Fianna Fail property bubble which has meant that many families are on the brink of losing their family home.

If the banks are entitled to bail outs then so are the homeowners who were led to believe that if they didn’t get on the property ladder then they would be left behind. A cabal of Fianna Fail, bankers and developers saw the introduction of reckless banking policies involving 100% mortgages. Banks are hiking up mortgage interest rates after billions of your money has been pumped into them to save them.

Respond warn that 25,000 families that may face repossession of the family home but these statistics may now underestimate the situation as interest rates increase.
Recent statistics indicate that 27,000 homeowners have missed repayments for three months or more. Of these, 6,400 have not paid their mortgage for a year.
In the past 12 months Irish taxpayers have provided a €400 billion guarantee to Irish financial institutions at a knock-down price, far cheaper than it will cost the Exchequer to borrow the money.
Taxpayers have already stumped up €11 billion in recapitalisation, and are expected to buy impaired loans from these institutions for €7 billion more than they are worth. This was all done to shore up the banks.

The Government have decided to support the banks at the expense of homeowners. Fine Gael has taken a very different view which would have involved the banks being held more responsible for the risky and reckless decisions that only added fuel to the unsustainable property boom. It is time to through homeowners a life line to help them through the worst of this recession.

FG Home Owner Support Scheme:

Our home-owner support scheme is geared towards protecting the families that genuinely face imminent repossession of the family home. This measure would allow NAMA take an equity share in a property after negotiating a write down in the outstanding debt with the relevant financial institution.
The property owner would then service his or her remaining share of the debt and pay a rental fee to NAMA for the equity share taken by NAMA. The home owner will have an option to buy back the NAMA equity share and if the property is sold NAMA will receive its share of the sale price.
Implementation of this policy will see the spectre of widespread repossessions avoided. NAMA can be seen to supporting homeowners while bailing out the banking sector.