Hanging our own out to dry

One of the most invidious acts, regrettably among many others, needlessly perpetrated by this Government on Irish citizens, must be the recent sale of the 13,000 mortgages of Irish Nationwide to two American distressed fund companies.

These companies bought the mortgages from the special liquidators KPMG at a huge discount of several billion euro, again courtesy of a lazy and uncaring Government and ultimately the Irish taxpayer. We are not told precisely, of course, by how much our money was discounted, due to ‘commercial sensitivity’.

The most appalling and callous aspect of this deal was that the owners of these mortgages were not afforded an equal opportunity by their Government to buy their own loans to ease their distressed financial state; it is almost certain that many will lose their homes as a result.