Labour populism over morgages
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A few Years ago Fine Gael had the idea that investors in Eircom should be compensated At the time Labour’s Ruari Quinn said.
The Labour Party leader said on an interview on RTÉ Radio that the proposal had “introduced a form of auction politics that would do great damage to the body politic”.
Mr Quinn said that the idea of appealing to individual sectional groups, without considering the needs of society as a whole, was “regrettable”.
Now it seems Labour are going back on it all.
The Labour Party Spokesperson on Social and Family Affairs, Roisin Shortall TD, has called on the government to use its new influence over the banks to make it easier for people to change from fixed-rate mortgage repayments to tracker mortgages
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“It should be possible for the banks to offer a once off penalty-free switch to a variable rate mortgage to existing customers or to at least reduce the penalty significantly.
“No-one is asking for a free ride, just a bit of fair play.
I do sympathies with people in that situation but think about it. Why did people go on Fixed Term mortgages and not tracker mortgages? Because the presumed that interest rates would go up and they would save money compared to the tracker mortgage. Basically they made an investment choice and it has failed. That what happens. Just like the people who bought Eircom shares people made an investment decision and it didn’t work. People invested in Bank shares they also went south. Should we compensate them now that the government owns the banks? No. The adds always say investments can rise as well as fall. Throughout the Celtic Tiger people ignored the Fall part and look where that got us. Are we going to repeat the same mistake?
Labour is basically trying to buy the electorate with this populist nonsense. If Tracker rates become more expensive then fixed rates will they also call for people to be allowed to move? Giving into Labours demand is saying that you will not suffer the downside of your investment decision. The quest for that fueled the sub-prime market and the credit crunch repeating the mistakes repeats the results.
a) The big borrowers have just been given a huge get-out from their borrowings, as have the banks
b) All that’s been asked for is that people won’t be hit with penalties of tens of thousands of euro in penalties for ONE change
Firsly Keith what get-out? The government have not been written off any loans and have said they will presue the loans. Also I don’t think I need to explain the need to stop the banks collapse.
But that just takes away from the policy outlined by Labour.
Keith that ONE change can cause the person to save tens of thousands of Euro and lose the Bank tens of thousands. Considering that some of the banks are owned by us now that is us paying tens of Thousands of euro to people for to have ONE change. There is alot of poor people in the tax brackets now that were not before these people don’t even have their own houses and now they should bail out the middle class who’s financial decisions went wrong?
If Interest rates shoot back up will labour say that people should be allowed ONE change back to fixed rate mortgages for free as well?
Simon,
Sadly, Labour has only one policy – say whatever comes into your mouth that will sound good and appeal to some cohort of the electorate. It’s been that way for a long time with Labour and there is no prospect of any departure from that under the current leadership. Now that they are racing ahead in the polls they are losing the run of themselves in their wholesale resort to populist rhetoric in every policy area. A few years back in one of those interminable reviews as to why they were stuck as the See-Saw Party of Irish politics,(up and down, but generally going nowhere), there was a suggestion that a name change might lead to an improvement in their elecotral fortunes. Now that they’re on the verge of a breakthrough – at least as they see it – a name change might be timely. The Me Fein Party, for instance?