Mick’s fight with AIB is a reminder that a home is more than just a house
MEP Mick Wallace is no working-class hero, but many ordinary people will relate to his struggle to keep his home, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
IF he wasn’t on the left politically, Mick Wallace would be regarded by the Irish media as a much more absurd figure, with his wild hair, scruffy jeans, and even wilder emotional outbursts.
That would be unfair to the former Wexford TD, now living the life of Riley as a newly elected MEP, because there’s more to him than that caricature would suggest.
Whatever undoubted amusement there may be in seeing him enthroned now among the mighty in Brussels, like Worzel Gummidge on a city break, the former builder’s 11th hour rebirth as a popular politician after the crash, announcing his candidacy on television just 20 days before the 2011 election, then going on to top the poll, is the stuff of political legend.
But then it’s also unfair that the Healy-Raes are mocked for their eccentricities of manner and opinion, and the sharp-witted Kerry brothers seem to be considered fair game all the same, just because they refuse to pander to the politically correct. If they were on the left too, they’d be taken much more seriously in Dublin.
Mick Wallace may resemble a cartoon character in some ways, but that doesn’t mean he’s not human. His fight to retain his home in Clontarf, which returned to the Circuit Civil Court in the capital this week, has veered into absurdity before, but nothing compares to the latest revelation that he previously threatened to burn down the house and was prepared to go to jail, or even be carried out of the property in a coffin, unless the bank granted him a loan for an apartment in Temple Bar.
It’s an easy scene to mock. Film noir fans will be reminded of James Cagney in White Heat, surrounded by his enemies and choosing to go down in a blaze of glory on the roof of his hideout rather than surrender. Any urge to make fun of the story should be resisted, though.
Without further details, it’s difficult to judge the seriousness of the threat, or the state of mind in which it was made. But giving Wallace the benefit of the doubt, it’s possible to see it as a telling illustration of the hopelessness and agony that anyone might feel at the potential loss of the family home. Tens of thousands have been afflicted by similar despair as a result of the financial crash.
At the end of their tether, ill with worry, not sleeping or knowing which way to turn, they too have been driven to consider desperate measures.
Last Christmas, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin told the Dail that 100,000 people a year consider suicide as a solution to their financial difficulties. An earlier study found that almost half of those in mortgage arrears were drinking unhealthily as a result.
More than half of the people in debt owed less than €250,000 — piffling sums to the banks, but a yoke too heavy for many ordinary people to carry. Like Mick Wallace, most of those feeling this way thankfully don’t carry out the threats, but only those who haven’t experienced that struggle would laugh at it.
The fight to keep from going under financially as the world closes in and options run out is a tragic one, whatever one might make of Wallace’s political views or, indeed, his behaviour, which has undoubtedly been reprehensible at various times.
The newly elected MEP’s barrister now says that his client has agreed to hand back the keys of the Clontarf house in March, and in return the court has postponed the repossession order by three months, giving Wallace the chance to spend one final Christmas in his home. It’s a compassionate decision, and one that’s fair to both parties. The bank has a right to get back some of the €955,044 that’s now owed on the original €825,000 mortgage.
Come March, Wallace himself may well start feeling relief that it’s all over.
There will always be sorrow at having to give up on a house, but those who’ve been through the same process generally experience some comfort once it’s all over. They can put it behind them and move on. Now Wallace can too. He has a new job and a new life in Brussels. Both offer untold advantages and perks.
Too many, probably. For many politicians, arriving in the European Parliament for the first time must feel like winning the lottery. They’re made for life. In time, enjoying those bounties, Wallace may come to see that the house in Clontarf wasn’t worth sacrificing everything for.
Having said that, it’s also not unreasonable to wonder what the reaction of the banks and the courts would be to another mortgage defaulter who acted as unreasonably as Mick Wallace did during the years in which he was at loggerheads with them.
“People say things in stressful situations,” explained his barrister about Wallace’s threat to burn down his own house. Indeed they do.
They don’t generally get away with it for as long as Mick Wallace, though. He has undoubtedly been indulged because of who he is, when less prominent people would have exhausted all existing wells of forbearance a long time ago.
AIB certainly appears to have been, in the words of the judge, “most patient” with Wallace, and more than generous in its offers to him over an extended period. That even included agreeing to give him a loan to buy the apartment in Temple Bar as long as he gave back the Clontarf house first.
What other mortgage defaulter could reasonably expect to be given another loan by the bank when they already owe tens of thousands of euros in arrears on another property? The bank even agreed to let Wallace keep his house in Wexford as a principal address, only for the TD for the constituency to tell them he didn’t want to live there.
Most people in that situation would have no choice.
Earlier this summer, it was revealed that AIB had written to 1,500 customers who were more than two years in arrears, warning them that their mortgages could be “sold to a third party” if they didn’t engage with the bank.
David Hall, who has spent years helping families in mortgage arrears, said at the time: “A State-owned bank has issued a clear and unequivocal threat to sell mortgages to a vulture.” It led to predictions that Ireland could be on the verge of a wave of home repossessions in the next few years.
It’s doubtful that any of these people will get the kid gloves treatment. That’s reserved for household names.
The best hope is that Mick Wallace at least acknowledges his huge privilege. He has an unfortunate tendency to play the victim, and, in his epic fight with the bank, appears to have portrayed himself once again as standing up to a system which was allegedly “seeking to deny” his rights.
He’s hardly Martin Luther King, and it does him no credit to keep pretending to be some kind of working-class hero, when it was financial adventurers like him which helped bring the country to penury in the first place. He lived it up while the Celtic Tiger roared, and now paints himself as just another victim of heartless capitalism. Give it a rest.
Mick Wallace will never need to worry about having a roof over his head, or putting food on the table. A bit of gratitude and humility from him wouldn’t go amiss.
‘He will never need to worry about having a roof over his head, or food on the table’