The first step to defusing the ticking mortgage time-bomb is to stop bailing out the banks with home-owners’ money, says People Before Profit candidate for Dublin South East Annette Mooney.
Annette Mooney, who is standing in Dublin South East as part of the United Left Alliance today criticised Fine Gael’s pledge to hand €166 a month to 250,000 home owners struggling with negative equity, while still bailing out the banks.
“Almost 40,000 people have not been able to pay their mortgages for six months or more now. Hundreds of repossession cases are being heard by the courts every week. UCD economist Morgan Kelly recently said the mortgage crisis put Ireland ‘on the cusp of a social conflict on the scale of the Land War’.”
It is not enough to just ease the burden on struggling home owners. To do so while still handing the taxes paid by the same struggling home-owners to the same banks is ludicrous and fundamentally unjust,” said Annette.
“We in PBP and the ULA have a better solution, the basis of which would be to first stop pouring money into the black-hole that is the banks. It is time to stop and to recognise how these families were bullied by an elite of property developers, banks, solicitors and other vested interests into jumping on the property ladder or risk being left out.”
Annette and PBP are proposing a three-point plan:
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We need to declare an economic emergency. During this period, mortgage companies should be forbidden from re-possessing the houses of any family that can prove financial distress.
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The government must impose a price control decree to prevent any rise in mortgages that is more than 1 percent above European base rate on interest.
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Mortgages holders must be given the option of an escape from lifelong debt enslavement. In the US, ‘jingle key’ laws allow the mortgage holders to hand back the keys of their property to the lender without incurring lifelong debt. In Ireland, however, the law favours the financial vampires who can enforce permanent debt imprisonment. This legislation must be changed immediately.
Contact Annette on: 087 633 2170