FF pressures Donohoe to stop home loan sale to vulture funds

FIANNA Fáil is to demand action to protect borrowers against vulture funds at a meeting this week with Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe.

The party is insisting that he block a move by Permanent TSB to offer a bundle of 20,000 home loans for sale to the highest bidder.

But while insisting that promises to defend householders in the Programme for Government must be honoured, Fianna Fáil backed away from threatening a general election yesterday.

The party has claimed that a queue of financial institutions are waiting to offload further problem mortgages if the PTSB sale goes ahead.

The bank is marketing a portfolio of home loans worth over €3billion to a range of international investors, including vulture funds that will not be accountable to the Central Bank.

Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath said the Confidence and Supply Agreement between his party and Fine Gael, which underpins the minority government, allowed for greater protection of mortgage holders.

‘We don’t want an election. We are focused on the agreement,’ he added.

Questioned later in the Dáil on the issue, the Taoiseach said PTSB had not yet sold any of the loans. ‘It has not identified a buyer. Some people are making the assumption it will be a socalled vulture fund. It might not be – perhaps it will be another bank or financial institution,’ Leo Varadkar said.

The bank had not yet consulted the Minister for Finance, he added, but it was required to do so before the sale, ‘as a consequence of the fact that the State owns 75% of that bank.’

A Consumer Protection Act of 2015 requires that the purchasers of loan books ‘must either be regulated by the Central Bank or the loans must be serviced by a credit firm which is,’ he added. It was thus ‘a little disingenuous’ to say loans are being sold on to an unregulated entity, Mr Varadkar maintained.