Bank responsibilities - People must be safe in their homes

IN a fiscal crisis riddled by a litany of incredible failures, pressure is mounting on thousands of homeowners struggling to make ends meet following a claim that Ireland’s €35 billion bailout failed to take defaults on mortgage payments into account.

If Anglo Irish Bank chairman Alan Dukes is right then the Government will have to borrow even more money from the IMF and the European Central Bank — money that taxpayers already collapsing under an enormous burden of state debt, will have to pay back.

Coming on the eve of today’s Dáil vote on the loan, the blunt question posed by Mr Dukes is what happens when homeowners begin to default on mortgages? Given his role as overseer of the most rotten bank in Ireland’s league of rotten financial institutions, he is well placed to sift fact from fiction.