Vultures must not feed off the PTSB carcass

DEMOCRACY supposes that a government is elected by ourselves and therefore can never be regarded as an alien power above us – but sometimes it can feel that way. Today, we reveal that PTSB is to sell 20,000 mortgages to vulture funds. It is worth reminding ourselves that this is a 75pc State-owned bank.

So one might suppose that the Minister for Finance, as an elected representative of the people, would have a say in this on our behalf. It becomes more like a presumption when one further recalls that PTSB cost this State €4bn to rescue. By State, we mean you, the compliant taxpayer.

A decade after the crash, some tough decisions have to be made. Irish and European banking regulators have been insisting all banks in the euro zone need to reduce significantly the percentage of non-performing loans on their balance sheets. And PTSB happens to have the highest ratio of such loans among Ireland’s bailed-out banks.

Loans do have to be managed, but there is a human consideration too: What protection is in place for those whose future now balances on the compassion of vulture funds? It doesn’t stop there: Will the State now have to step in and provide homes for the 20,000?

And does this give carte blanche to other lenders to divest themselves of the tens of thousands of other distressed home loans; will they too need to be added to an already hopelessly overcrowded housing list?

It has been said a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. We are not sheep, nor is the Government a wolf, but the vulture funds are vultures and it is instructive to remember that a group of these feeding together on a carcass is collectively called a wake.

A bank may lose little sleep in purging itself of distressed loans but when it is a largely State-owned institution there ought to be pause for thought, especially when those loans involve distressed people.