Irish mortgage backlash gains momentum

In the unending fallout from Ireland's great property-market crash, a latte-sipping 42-year-old Dublin mother of four is an unlikely champion of a hard-nosed view increasingly popular among this country's frustrated middle class - don't ask me to subsidise your mortgage payments.

Amid growing calls for official action to help the 110,000 Irish mortgage holders who are in arrears on their repayments, Sandra - who declines to give her surname because her message is unpopular - says there must be no taxpayer-funded relief for deadbeat mortgagees. If people cannot pay their mortgages, she has no objection to their houses being repossessed.

"People living in houses they can't afford should move to a house they can afford," she said.

Sandra is part of a new wave of protest emerging in the fierce Irish debate about the property crash and its aftermath. Much of it is centred around the Irish Moral Hazard Organisation, a nascent "movement" that makes no bones about its contempt for the idea of mortgage relief.

The question of mortgage arrears and what to do about them has shot to the top of the Irish political agenda as a general election looms within a year. As it prepares its first "spring statement" - a preview of its budget along the lines of the UK autumn statement - for delivery next week, the government is facing calls for action to help both mortgagees in arrears and those on "standard variable rate" mortgages. The latter complain that the high interest rates that they typically pay are extortionate at a time of record-low interest rates across the eurozone.

But given the strong Irish economic recovery, the question is whether the problem is so severe that it demands government intervention. According to the central bank, 14.5 per cent of Irish mortgages - with a value of about €20bn - are in arrears, but it says that the number fell for six consecutive quarters to the end of last year.

The most difficult are those in arrears for more than 720 days, amounting to 8 per cent of the total of outstanding mortgages at the end of 2014. "They are the human victims of this crisis," says David Hall, who runs the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation, which advocates for people in debt. "These are the most difficult cases that our banker friends didn't want to admit existed."

Sandra remains unmoved. "I'm just horrified at the idea of having to subsidise someone else's mortgage payments," she says, in between sips of coffee, at a McDonald's in the leafy suburb of Mount Merrion. "I'm much more in danger of being homeless than anyone on a mortgage. If I miss two rent payments, I'm out. Yet there are people who haven't made mortgage interest payments for several years and they are still living in their homes. Why is that right?"

The IMHO's website pulls no punches: "In mortgage arrears? Sorry, but do you really expect the rest of us to pay it?" It says that it is a group of voters and taxpayers who "share the old-fashioned but unfashionable belief that if you do not pay your mortgage your house should be repossessed".

The comments suggest that at least some Irish people are growing weary at the idea of yet another bailout. Taxpayers bailed out the collapsing banks in the 2008/10 crash to the tune of €64bn. In 2010 the nation itself was bailed out by its "troika" of international creditors, for €67bn. Taxes have risen and wages have stagnated during seven years of austerity.

That view hits a nerve in Ireland, where eviction and home repossession by often absentee landlords in the colonial era are part of the national narrative. Karl Deeter, an expert on the Irish property market, says that many Irish people think that "if you are in mortgage arrears you are somehow a victim." Irish banks, which remain mostly in state ownership after the crash, have been reluctant to pursue repossessions, though the process is beginning to pick up.

Sandra says that she has no desire to put anyone out on the street. But she is adamant on one thing: "I would never vote for any political party that expected me to subsidise other people's mortgage repayments."

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