Country was held to ransom by mortgage triads

In his article ‘Stronger Action Needed’, Tim Pat Coogan (Irish Examiner, Aug 22) blames corrupt and lazy politicians, senior civil servants, bankers, businessmen, lawyers, accountants and stockholders for Ireland’s affliction. But he has overlooked the dreaded fiscal triads, who scoured city streets and rural roads seeking mortgagees.

These triads would deliver people to yuppie bank managers, caught in the competitive frenzy of mortgage-sales targets. Emerging in gangs of threes from designated collection banks, and armed with shillelaghs, knobkerries and plastic hand grenades, freelance triads were trained to identify people free of financial burden. Their prime targets were adults who strode with jovial confidence and ready smile along pavement or shaded lane.

I happened to be visiting one of these collection banks, having heard of the ‘easy brown envelope filling service’, when a man was brought in by a triad.

He was distraught, having been advised that his wife and children had been taken hostage. But the good news was that they could be released in time for dinner, provided he agreed to the mortgage on a newly built, four-bedroomed house, with en-suite main bedroom, double garage, plus two garden sheds, in a leafy suburb only ten miles from his place of work.

Despite the man’s emphatic repetition that he could not afford the €2,000 monthly repayment, on a gross wage of €900 a week, his point was brusquely rejected, and, for the sake of his family, he was forced to sign the 20-year commitment.

Maybe Tim Pat Coogan, with the help of his good friend, Diarmuid Ferriter, would like to look into the effect the heretofore unidentified triads might have had on innocent house-buyers and on the number and value of forced mortgages agreed between, say, 2000 and 2007.

Chris Callaghan

Ballylusky

Co Cork