UTV hosted a conversation about the new Mortgage Bill that went through the Dail last night. The conversation was hosted by Claire Brock and the panel was made up of Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein), Stephen Curtis (IMHO) and Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers.
Protection of Residential Mortgage Account Holders Bill 2014
Normally I expect a better outing from Fianna Fail – in particular where Michael McGrath is concerned. Their new bill for protecting mortgage account holders (aimed mainly at IBRC former Nationwide loan holders) is a banger.
It gets down to details in section 3 onwards. In section 4 it calls any buyer to ‘be bound by such Codes of Practice that govern residential mortgages that are in force at the time of the sale and/or transfer or are subsequently introduced by the Central Bank’. This is misinformation.
You can’t ‘opt in’ to regulation, something we already covered here, you are either regulated or not and mimicking best practice doesn’t mean anything as there is no binding force behind it.
In section 4.2 it states that ‘It shall be a precondition to the sale or transfer of residential mortgage loans by persons or entities who acquire, either by purchase or transfer, residential mortgage loans from financial institutions regulated by the Central Bank to other persons or entities …