Just €300 in arrears and bank still sold home to a vulture fund
Caroline says she feels like ‘giving up’ after receiving brutal mortgage letter
A WOMAN got her arrears down to just €300 – but heartless Permanent TSB still sold her home to a vulture fund.
Caroline Kearns worked herself to the bone to get on top of her debts following a marriage separation.
The 58-year-old insisted: “I did everything the bank asked me to.
“I worked overtime. I haven’t had a holiday in years.”
Her two-bedroom apartment in Finglas, North Dublin, is one of 11,000 properties the State-owned bank flogged to a US vulture fund. Mortgage holders got a brutal letter during the August Bank Holiday weekend telling them about the rogue deal with Smart Mortgages.
The mother of one said: “I was in shock when I got that letter. I didn’t sleep that night. I asked them, ‘How come you’re doing this to me?’ because I thought I did really get the arrears down to just €300.
“I had had meetings with Permanent TSB all along and they told me , ‘You’re doing great, continue what you’re doing’. I feel like I worked my butt off. After I separated I was paying the mortgage on my own. I owed €18,000 and I have now got that all the way down to just €300. By Christmas I will have no arrears whatsoever.
“I worked to their terms and did everything they asked and after all that, this is what I get. I am very stressed about the whole thing. Sometimes I just feel likegiving up.”
Caroline added she never buried her head in the sand and engaged with the banks during her most difficult times. She said: “At one point I was in
I was in shock when I got that letter. I didn’t sleep that night CAROLINE KEARNS FINGLAS YESTERDAY
hospital for eight weeks and I came out and had a meeting with the bank manager. He told me what I needed to do to get back on top of things and I did exactly what they told me.”
Caroline doesn’t believe the sale of her home loan is legal.
She added: “After I got the letter I rang them [Permanent TSB] and I said, ‘My contract is with you. I can’t understand how you can just transfer my contract to another company. How are you allowed to do that?’
“I would have thought I would have to sign forms to do that.
“I took out my mortgage with Permanent TSB and I wouldn’t just let them change me over to another company.” A bank spokesman last night said he could not comment on Ms Kearns’ case.
But he wanted to make a number of what he described as “key points” on the issue overall.
He said 2,500 accounts are deemed “Not Co-operating”, while 3,850 are classified as those which have “refused treatments or where the account has failed to operate in line with the agreed treatment”.
The spokesman said the average arrears time of loans in the portfolio is three-and-a-half years.
He added average arrears is €28,800 and value of loan around €175,000.
THERE is something rotten at the heart of the Government’s position on banks which have stabbed their own customers in the back by selling their home loans to vulture funds.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe seems to be playing a game of pass the parcel, abdicating any sort of responsibility when it comes to protecting people who face losing their homes.
But this is anything but a game for the hundreds of householders whose lives were turned upside down when they received letters telling them Permanent TSB had sold the roof over their heads.
Nothing to do with me, not my problem, seems to be his mantra.
Well sorry Paschal, that is simply not good enough.
We have pumped €64billion into our financial institutions, giving them the resuscitation they needed when the billions recklessly loaned out during the boom came back to haunt them in the crash.
Maybe, Minister, you should consider meeting Marian Cahill, the sick grandmother whose house is on the line at the same time as she battles the onset of dementia.
Or Caroline Kearns, who worked her socks off to reduce her arrears to €300 but could not save it from the clutches of the vultures.
Wake up Minister, grow a set and start protecting the Irish people. It’s your duty.