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GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news you need to know as you start the day.
1. A Galway creche closed its doors yesterday after 17 years, with the owner describing government contracts as “death by a thousand cuts” for small, independent services such as hers.
2. The Department of Integration has launched an investigation after letters were issued to a number of families warning that food and housing may be “reduced or withdrawn” in Dundrum House in Co Tipperary.
It said it was concerned by the wording of the warning as it “falls short of the standard” for communicating with residents and added that it needed to “verify” the letters.
3. Fans of the British rock band Oasis scrambled to get tickets for the reunion concerts this morning, but they faced multiple tech issues as the Ticketmaster website continued to crash.
4. A block on Elon Musk’s X social network in Brazil started to take effect today after a Supreme Court judge ordered its suspension.
5. A pleasant weekend is in store as the forecast reinforces there may still be some summer left – especially in the west of the country.
6. At least four crew members died and one was missing after a firefighting helicopter crashed in the Douro River in northern Portugal on Friday.
The pilot survived the accident that prompted the government to decree a day of national mourning for today.
7. More than a fifth of people who unknowingly watched deepfake videos of Irish politicians being interviewed as part of a study told researchers that they “remembered” the interviews actually taking place.
However, the study by researchers at University College Cork also found that participants were almost as likely to form a false memory of a fake story that was presented in a text format as one which was shown to them as a deepfake video.
8. The doctor who has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the overdose death of “Friends” actor Matthew Perry was ordered today by a judge not to practice medicine.
9. The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) believes the ongoing mpox outbreaks in Africa might be stopped in the next six months and said today that the agency’s first shipment of vaccines should arrive in Congo within days.
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Pepper took over the Dansk Bank mortgages. They charge 4.5%, the highest variable residential mortgage rate in Europe, dunno how they get away with it.
@Darren Bates: are they not taking non-performing loans, thus a higher interest rate.
Do they buy underperforming soccer players as well as under performing mortgages? There’s a few around Manchester.
Best of luck to the customers. Lucky my mam was able to pay them off the minute her commercial loan was sold to them in 2012.
@RJ:
Not being funny, but if she could afford to pay it off how did she end up in arrears?
Genuine question.
@The Great Unwashed: most of the loans sold aren’t in arrears. She wasn’t. Sold off risk if u ask me.
@The Great Unwashed:
@The Great Unwashed:
Not being funny, did you not read the average arrears in the article … 7 years? I posted this below to help bring people like yourself up to speed and to help you understand why people are angry at this:
The devil is in the detail in this article. The average policy holder is 7 payments in arrears. 7 payments. They have sold these supposed underperforming loans to a vulture fund. You may have held the mortgage for 20 years and be 7 single payments in arrears. The loan is sold on with a massive discount to another fund, something which the owner is not entitled to, and the banks use the tax payer funded bailout facility to write off the difference. Irish tax payers pick up the profits for the vulture fund. Sick.
@RJ:
All of the mortgages just sold by Ulster Bank were in arrears.
If her loan was fully performing she would’ve had nothing to worry about as the terms of the original loan contract would have to be honoured by the purchaser of the contract.
@DaMoons:
Read my comment again slowly.
@DaMoons:
You should probably read the article again more slowly too.
@The Great Unwashed: When Bank of Scotland Ireland pulled out, they hired a caretaker company to manage their mortgages. They then changed the company to Pepper after a few years & quietly sold them their mortgages around 2012. It didnt matter if they were in arrears or not.
@Patricia Donovan:
As I said above, if the mortgage is fully up to date the borrower has nothing to worry about – the owner of the loan cannot unilaterally change the terms of the original contract (and why would they – unless it’s a tracker mortgage they’re making good money with it).
@The Great Unwashed: she didn’t know the company, didn’t trust them and paid it off asap
@RJ:
Fair enough – that was her choice.
If she took advice she would’ve been told that the only thing that would change would be the logo and address at the top of the letters.
Don’t pay, won’t pay, cant stay …simple….
@GerryCummins: I suspect the “Don’t Pay” phrase sums you up accurately ..
@GerryCummins: unless you are well to do and can afford high price legal eagles to fight your corner as several high profile people with friends in high places are presently doing
Pepper are a truly horrible company to deal with, even if your mortgage is paid fully up to date. If you ever sell your house and your solicitor writes to them to release the deeds of the house allow at least twice what it takes most other banks and wait to be fobbed off repeatedly.
@Cormac O’ Keeffe:
If your mortgage was fully up to date it wouldn’t have been sold to Pepper.
@The Great Unwashed: it was if your original bank pulled out of the Irish market, such as Bank of Scotland
@The Great Unwashed: wrong!!!!! I have never missed a payment since ‘95 my mortgage was with BOS , Then Halifax and finally Pepper…
@Vocal Outrage:
If a fully performing mortgage was transferred under those circumstances the terms of the original mortgage contract would have to be honoured.
@The Great Unwashed: Many are not in arrears but are considered underperforming for a multitude of reasons not at the fault of the owners.
@Dave O’Shea: The great unwashed either hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about, or he doesn’t care as long as the tax payer cover the banks. I hope he responds.
@The Great Unwashed: not so! My mortgage was fully paid up and it was sold to Pepper from Bank is Scotland Ireland.
@GoodMoaning:
The only loans fully up to date with repayments as per the original contract but considered ‘non-performing’ are tracker mortgages, and the loan owner (original or new) cannot unilaterally break that contract by taking the borrower off the tracker rate – they just have to suck it up and take the hit.
@Dave O’Shea:
@Ferg:
Fair enough. I was talking (in the context of the article) about lenders staying in the market. Lenders make the main chunk of their profits from performing loans – they have absolutely no reason to sell them off, especially at a discount. That would be like a shop owner selling his prime stock to a competitor at a 50% discount.
In your cases the repayments were fully up to date therefore the purchaser of the contract is obliged to honour the original contract, so not really relevant to this article.
@DaMoons:
No particular fan of the banks I assure you, but I just have a better understanding of how the mortgage market works than you do.
@The Great Unwashed: In a similar way to others who have replied, just to say that all of Danske Bank’s mortgages (National Irish Bank was the original lender In our case) were taken over by Pepper. They were just a terrible company to deal with.
@Ferg: was that not solely because Bank of Scotland pulled out of Ireland. The whole book of business was sold and did the terms of your mortgage change
@Cormac O’ Keeffe:
Fair enough, their customer service may be poor, but if your mortgage is up to date they can’t just change the terms of your loan as they see fit – you have a legally binding contract.
@Cormac O’ Keeffe: lost deeds is another scam, you then have to pay about €3k+ for a new set. Pointless suing them as they string it out for years before eventually settling
Ulster Bank are dreadful to deal with. My friend has been trying to have an income and expenditure statement looked at by them for almost a year. She’s trying to return to full payments and reduce her arrears but Ulster Bank won’t reply to her.
She’s taking her case to the Ombudsman.
Is the standard variable rate not 4.5% across board?
The devil is in the detail in this article. The average policy holder is 7 payments in arrears. 7 payments. They have sold these supposed underperforming loans to a vulture fund. You may have held the mortgage for 20 years and be 7 single payments in arrears. The loan is sold on with a massive discount to another fund, something which the owner is not entitled to, and the banks use the tax payer funded bailout facility to write off the difference. Irish tax payers pick up the profits for the vulture fund. Sick.
@DaMoons: that’s completely false. The article states average arrears for private homes is 36k and 31k for buy to let.
@The Second Last Word: And how much of a discount money wise are the vulture funds getting and are the banks using the tax payer provided bailout fund to cover these write downs?
@DaMoons: thats a completely different point to the wholly incorrect statement you made originally about numer of missed payments
@DaMoons: This crap has being going on for 10+ years. No more excuses! Reposs and let the rest of the country get back to a normal market..
@Lar Meyler: Are you happy with tax payers money covering the firesale that makes other people rich?
@Lar Meyler: and put couples and children out on the street because they lost their jobs in a recession created by the banks and governments. Yeah great idea dude.
So, what? Pepper comes in and forecloses on the homes?
@Ben Coughlan: not necessarily. From what I’ve seen Pepper are very good to deal with, but if people don’t engage with them it can lead to trouble. Ulster Bank didn’t sell the loans for nothing. Nothing is ever for free.
@Darren Bates: Pepper are arseholes to deal with . I was paying off a mortgage .. never arrears . Dreadful Awful Horrible experience
@Ben Coughlan: pepper purchased the entire irish loan book from Bank of Scotland. If you had maintained your payments etc the only thing that changed was the logo at the top of the letter. Bo change in payments and still a low rate in comparison to Irish banks
@Vocal Outrage: no change
@Darren Bates: between 25/30 cents in the € that what these loans are bought for ,!.
If you don’t play ball with Ulster Bank, you’re gonna get pepper sprayed
@Melissa Mahony: In fairness, it is 10 years after the crash…
You don’t have to be in arrears for your loan to be sold to a vulture fund. I should know PTSB sold my loan to Pepper and within a year I was pushed into receivership. Shame on all Banks and financial Institutions in this country.
@Tom Poynton: how were you pushed into receivership
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