The Workers’ Party have called for immediate intervention by the state to prevent the sale by Permanent TSB of up to 10,000 mortgages to Start Mortgages, an Irish affiliate of the Texas based Lone Star vulture fund for a reported €1.3 billion.
Gavin Mendel-Gleason, the Workers’ Party representative for Dublin North West, said the government, which still owns 75% of Permanent TSB, had an obligation to protect the mortgage holders whom he said would be pawns in a game of high-finance and were liable to be left in deep trouble by the sale.
Mr. Mendel-Gleason said that the decision showed that PTSB and other financial institutions showed that they had learned nothing from the collapse of such institutions a decade ago, least of all humility.
He said that promises of tighter regulation of financial institutions made in the wake of the bailout had proved illusory. “The Irish people were told that the reckless trading practices of banking institutions which led to the financial meltdown could never happen again. This was clearly insincere talk to calm nerves and there was never an intention of putting such policy into practice”.
The Workers’ Party representative said the crocodile tears of Fianna Fáil and the other main parties and their demands for the prospective buyers to come before the Oireachtas Finance Committee were whistling in the dark. So too was talk of legislation in the next Dáil term to curtail the vulture funds. “Action is needed now, tonight and tomorrow not when the Dáil decides to come back from a long holiday. ”, said Mendel Gleason.
He said: “The sale of these 10,000 mortgages is a done deal. The only way it can be stopped is by immediate intervention by the Minister for Finance to stop the sale going ahead. If necessary the Dáil should be recalled and made to sit in emergency session”, said Gavin Mendel-Gleason.