Mother’s heartbreak as Scrooge bankers take home

THE mother at the centre of a High Court case, where an order has been made for the possession of her home, told the Waterford News & Star she is feeling “very sad and despondent”, a week after her worst nightmare became a reality.

The former Waterford Crystal worker, whose husband also worked for the company, had taken out a €277,000 mortgage with lender Stepstone Mortgage Funding with an interest rate of nearly 11% in early 2008. The couple put an additional €70,000 in savings towards the purchase and later adapted the house for their special needs son. Mortgage arrears have mounted to nearly €40,000, the court heard last week.

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This piece ignores glaring questions. Anything that might distract from the emotive "innocent victim" story is glossed over or ignored.

Questions that should have been asked and answered:

1. What on earth is someone with €70K (a 20% deposit) doing borrowing €277K from a subprime lender at 11%?

2. Were there credit issues in the recent past that led them to a subprime lender?

3. How did they clock up nearly €40K in arrears in less than two years? Did they manage to pay it at any stage? Was the mortgage unaffordable from day 1?

4. Why should people be allowed to borrow as much as they want, at any interest
rate they want, and then get to decide how much they'll pay each month. This family
offered €800 a month. That would cover less than half of the interest on their mortgage.

Why didn't they buy something that would have had a mortgage payment of €800 a month?
Why didn't they rent something for €800 a month? That would get you a lot of house in
Waterford.

This story sounds very like the Moody family in Cavan. They also got media attention but when someone bothered to ask the real questions the story fell apart.

These kinds of stories to a disservice to people who genuinely got into trouble through no fault of their own. If we get enough of these poorly researched stories hitting the media it will do damage to the public appetite to help those who need help.

I'm not trying to be mean or harsh here. I have sympathy for people who get into financial trouble, but there's a limit to that sympathy. I have no sympathy for people who make mistakes and then claim..

"We did not do anything wrong. We are now made to suffer by losing our jobs and being stamped upon as a nuisance to society and being treated as dirt."

-Rd