Government must look to stop anguish caused by vulture funds
■ Fair play to Irish Independent Personal Finance Editor Charlie Weston for opening up the debate about so-called vulture funds buying distressed home mortgages from some sections of the Irish banking sector.
These faceless institutions, who don’t have the moral courage and common decency to sign their own demand letters have just picked on the wrong man.
And they have the audacity to ask in the unsigned correspondence for the personal details of the mortgage holder. What a cheek.
These banks, which the Irish people own and bailed out of a financial mess of their own making a number of years ago, show no respect or gratitude to customers like Mr Weston and his family, who have not missed a payment to ensure they keep a roof over heads.
The fund that now owns their mortgage has been revealed as a registered charity, with the ultimate owner being identified as a giant American investment company.
The anguish, distress and sleepless nights that this intolerable situation has caused to many hard-pressed families in recent years across the State has to stop immediately.
The Government has to sort this out in the short term as a matter of the greatest urgency.
The wild vulture is an opportunist bird of prey that circles high in the sky, to pick out a dead or dying animal, and then lands when the coast is clear to pick it clean.
The old saying is true that “birds of a feather flock together”.
Tom Towey Cloonacool, Co Sligo