Mortgage protection - Plight of the homeowner is ignored

When the current financial crisis first erupted, the Government came up with imaginative proposals to rescue the banks.

The idea of guaranteeing bank deposits was not so much to protect depositors as to prevent runs on the banks that would have brought them crashing down.

It was a perceptive move for which the Finance Minister deserves credit. Many questions have been raised about the level of risk that the Government has been incurring to help out the banks with the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA). Billions are being put aside to rescue the banks and the property speculators, but this is also probably necessary to protect the overall economy.