FF Bill to tackle mortgage rates to be debated on Tuesday and Wednesday night

inaquandert said:
I hope no one ever trusts a bank to do anything voluntarily. Shame on Michael Noonan and fg for not doing somrthingbabout this sooner.
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I think the various banks have shown their true colours over the last while. I honestly hope that we have learned enough lessons from the past decade not to be afraid to let 'corrupt' institutions fail. I don't believe anyone is 'too big' to fail.

On Monday night, I wrote to my 4 TD's in Dun Laoghaire (3 of which are FG). Not a single one acknowledged by email other than Mary Mitchell-O'Connor's assistant. I will defend her that she did actively engage me on this exact topic last March when the bill was originally submitted. I think personally this is shameful, that the 'party' is still number 1, and any level of free thought is suppressed. Irish politics is really like the 'borg' mentality


While I have a level of reservations about this bill myself, mainly that the Central Bank will not use the power if given it, I do feel it is a major step forward. The amount of newspaper inches that this issue will get over the next few days will be massive. This can only be a good thing, even if you should only believe 50% of what you read !!!
Serious thanks to Brendan for his endless fight on this. His commitment over the last while cannot be underestimated. On behalf of all the SVR holders in Ireland, I personally thank you

Finally, I think Michael McGrath deserves a massive thanks also. He has been a champion on this for ages. I am sure it will result in a fair few votes for FF if there is another election any time soon !
 
Interesting debate on the Bill on RTE 1 radio at the moment for those that are interested...
 
Sarenco said:
There is always a cost associated with any reduction in risk.
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Will disagree with the always statement - and replace with should be :)

My original SVR mortgage with BOI was on a standard rate with no allowance made for the fact the LTV was around the 65% mark at the time. If I had a 90% LTV which was permitted at the time, the rate would be the same even though the risk logically is much higher.
But we have already discussed the fact that we don't really do 'real' risk based assessments here in Ireland on a different thread.
 
gnf_ireland said:
Will disagree with the always statement - and replace with should be :)
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Point taken but if a particular risk isn't being borne by you it's being borne by somebody else in the system.

If you are paying a higher rate than is appropriate for somebody with your risk profile then it follows that somebody else is paying a lower rate than is appropriate for their circumstances.

Ultimately all borrowers (and, ultimately, taxpayers) collectively bear precisely the same risk.
 
Sarenco said:
Yes, congratulations to all who supported the Bill.

I'm curious whether anybody (other than Michael McGrath) actually spoke in favour of the Bill during the debate. I haven't listened to all the contributions to the debate as yet but everybody I have listened to so far either said the Bill was "flawed" or "fatally flawed". And yet it passed to the next stage.
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All FF speakers spoke in favour of it of course. It was accepted by almost everyone that any flaws could be investigated at committee stage. Most bills evolve while passing through the oireachtas. I think the test will be will Noonan and co work on it to improve it or will they continue to put up barriers.
 
Fair enough but can you really improve a proposal that you believe is fundamentally flawed?

I understood that the programme for government provided that all legislation would be subject to (all party) pre-vetting. That didn't last long.
 
I would also like to say I'm delighted that this has gone through and shame on FG and Michael Noonan for putting the banks first and getting their profits up at the expense of 300,000 SVR holders, especially the captives. My one reservation is that the central bank will sit on the powers they've been given and don't want. I do hope that some sort of mechanism is built in at committee stage that ensures that the central bank is made do it's job re consumer protection and puts manners on the banks if and when they step out of line without justifiable reasons. I'd also like to finally thank Brendan for his huge perseverance with this issue as well as Michael McGrath for his efforts on our behalf. In fairness people give out a lot about politicians a lot of the time with justification but we must give him huge credit on this occasion. All we need now is to keep a watching brief as there's quite a number of people who will try everything to delay and frustrate this, eg frank money still not having its licence and thereby removing the lack of competition argument.
 
Sarenco said:
Fair enough but can you really improve a proposal that you believe is fundamentally flawed?

I understood that the programme for government provided that all legislation would be subject to (all party) pre-vetting. That didn't last long.
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The pre-vetting thing just hasn't come in yet. Sure it's probably a good thing for bills but Noonan wanted to delay this bill for vetting for SIX months. Delays and barriers. There should be opportunity at committee stage to analyse and amend any legitimate concerns on the provisions.

Is the bill fundamentally flawed? I don't know tbh. Something has to be done though. I'd rather the legislature attempts to fix the situation rather than kow-towing to the central bank when the cb is only concerned with the profit margins of these companies rather than the citizens of the State.
 
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bdecuc said:
Is the bill fundamentally flawed? I don't know tbh. Something has to be done though. I'd rather the legislature attempts to fix the situation rather than kow-towing to the central bank when the cb seems only concerned with the profit margins of these companies rather than the citizens of the State.
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bdecuc,

I see your point, but in this case, the bill is so flawed that it would really need to be completely re-drafted.
As I mentioned previously, Catherine Martin in particular, cited some of the many reasons why the Bill is unconstitutional.

I would rather see a Bill re-drafted than one that if enacted had no realistic chance of surviving a constitutionality challenge.
 
Cant believe Michael Noonan.

FG are only against this so they can be seen to be of a different view to FF.

I dont think this Bill will come into force any time soon though so lets not go celebrating like wev won aka my beloved Liverpool in all their niavety.
 
bdecuc said:
The pre-vetting thing just hasn't come in yet.
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If it was part of the programme for government I would have assumed that it was applicable on formation of the government, no?

In my opinion the Bill, as currently drafted, in a wasted opportunity to provide a degree of protection to those borrowers who are not in a position to refinance their loans with other lenders. That is not a minor complaint - it's a fundamental difference of opinion. Tinkering at committee stage is just wasting time if you take the view that the Bill as currently drafted will be completely ineffective in achieving its stated objectives.

Far better to go back to the drawing board, in my opinion, to try and achieve a meaningful, effective legislative advancement.
 
I guess we'll have to see what the Attorney General's advice is. Catherine Martin spoke well but she may or may not be correct. Sure some crowd called Investec seem to have concerns and Noonan bizarrely cited them. When Investec take over from the AG's office well all be rightly screwed.

I hope the bill can be analysed, amended if necessary and enacted.
 
Catherine Martin certainly spoke well but it's not clear to me what provision of our Constitution she (or anybody else) believes will be breached by the Bill if enacted.

My problem with the Bill isn't based on a constitutional argument. I simply don't believe the Bill will be effective in achieving it's stated aims and potentially could be counter-productive, resulting in higher overall mortgage rates in the medium term (by deterring potential new entrants to the market). I obviously appreciate that is not a popular view around these parts.
 
I would have thought this was obvious.

How long would it be before interested parties mounted a constitutional challenge to legislation which conferred absolute power of interpretation of vague legislation to a regulatory body, where entities it regulates would have no right of appeal against its decisions?

However, I also don’t buy the competition mantra as the only solution.

How long do entrapped borrowers have to wait for competition?
 
Sarenco said:
Catherine Martin certainly spoke well but it's not clear to me what provision of our Constitution she (or anybody else) believes will be breached by the Bill if enacted.

My problem with the Bill isn't based on a constitutional argument. I simply don't believe the Bill will be effective in achieving it's stated aims and potentially could be counter-productive, resulting in higher overall mortgage rates in the medium term (by deterring potential new entrants to the market). I obviously appreciate that is not a popular view around these parts.
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Presumably articles 40.3.2 & 43.1 - Recognise the private property rights of individuals (which includes corps) and assures individuals it will not pass laws that interfere with property rights.

These were the same issues faced when the government sought to adjust upward only rent increases.

There is a social justice caveat to these articles but a 5 year old could reasonably challenge that argument - why not interfere with tracker contracts? Why not allow banks foreclose on defaulted borrowers? The state/4.5mm citizens own these banks - why prioritize these 300k mortgages over the entire population?

The bill as presented is weak an ambiguous. It may help though - political/media pressure may force banks to move a bit more. I would say though that if this is the standard of draft legislation presented by public representatives (one of the largest parties too) then ireland is very poorly served. I'm sure ff and sf will get plenty of air time which is really the desired outcome.
 
Sophrosyne said:
I would have thought this was obvious.
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What do you think was so obvious? Catherine Martin didn't mention any specific constitutional provisions so we can only speculate why she has taken the views that the Bill would be destined to be struck down on constitutional grounds.

I'm not saying she is wrong - I just don't think this aspect of her argument was particularly well developed (I appreciate that there are time constraints on speaking time so that's not really a criticism).

Sophrosyne said:
How long do entrapped borrowers have to wait for competition?
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I think this is the real missed opportunity of the Bill. Borrowers that are not in a position to refinance their loans are not in a position to benefit from competition in the market and, in my opinion, are deserving of a degree of statutory protection. I am of the view that we should adopt the French model (or a variant of this model) where rates are simply capped at a prescribed % over average rates (either of all outstanding loans or new lending rates).
 
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