I think its a valid question from the OP and a (surprisingly) robust answer from the moderator who is simply laying it out as it is and not advocating defaulting, this is self evident in his subsequent post that he is campaigning against this (which I oppose him doing). However, I see Brendan in a more fairer light than I had suspected for years. Its the immense anxiety of not knowing what or when something will happen that is the real stress maker. People are not stupid, they're just not informed of the processes that dictate their lives.
My two cents.
People seem to be forgetting that the government works for the people, not the other way round, and the banks are supposed to be providing a service but went rogue to the point of almost wreaking the government.
The banks crippled this country, the government know it and the people know it. Keep that as a massive backdrop in your hasty responses. People are suffering. I'm tired hearing "you borrowed the money pay it back" as if it was a level playing field, as if there was an equal amount of credit and debit. Its a ponzi scheme, we all know this now, money is loaned into existence so where to the banks get off add interest!
Its up to the government/judiciary to grant or not grant eviction notices. And why should they be so hasty to work FOR wreak-less lenders who made speculation their business model and brought them to their knees? They held a gun up to the late Brian Lenihans head for the bail-out. Remember the infamous phone-call from Anglo,,,, "give us the moolaah"! The audacity!
I think the Irish government are using this bureaucracy as a two fingers to the banks. In other words, you lent recklessly and now you want us (the government) to throw our own citizens onto the streets only for us to have to re-house them? I don't think so!... They are throwing this hot potato at each other, its a sick game.
There will be obviously people out to take advantage of any system, C'est la vie. This is people reacting completely natural to an unnatural system. My generation were nailed and we're very angry.
Not one person in the financial arena has been held account to what happened. What infuriates me to no end is the constant battering and blaming of the victims. The discussion in the mainstream is only about how are people are dealing with what happened and NOT about what or who caused it, as it rightly should be.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. No lessons were learnt from this, its business as usual.
- Give a loan with vague details, no insight on mortgage arrears process or calculation methods,
- force them to take out insurance that benefits the lender...,
- devalue the property
- country goes into recession
- debtor gets into difficulty
- kick him out
- filp the property to another sucker and restart the process all over again .......
The OP's query is a reflection of how people are dealing with this, they're trying to educate themselves. You need to find out where all the snares and trip wires have been laid.
Banks want nothing more than you to fall into arrears. I have not gotten any arrears policy or insight as to how they are calculating them nor would they even give me a full mortgage account statement so I could backward calculate how they are doing it. It's insane. I'm glad the Judiciary have this buffer zone bureaucracy and Brendan shared it for genuine sufferers. I've no time for people playing the system whatsoever, on both sides of the fence.
zen