Legal rights group urges action to avoid homelessness

Senior policy analyst Paul Joyce, legal and policy officer Ciaran Finlay, and Public Interest Law Alliance (PILA) legal officer Eithne Lynch attended yesterday’s committee meeting.

Mr Joyce told the committee that the number of more intractable arrears cases is not being addressed quickly enough.

He said: “FLAC believes there is at present an over-reliance on arrears capitalisation and split mortgages as permanent restructuring arrangements, at the expense of other options such as debt write-down and term extensions. This may feed into the homelessness crisis for some people both now and far into the future, given the higher financial pressures of these options for over-indebted borrowers.

“The increased rate of repossession applications in our courts also indicate than rather that being a way to get people to cooperate with lenders, such proceedings are becoming by default a way of resolving more intractable arrears cases.”

Mr Finlay added: “At present there is no state support for households which suffer temporary setbacks making their mortgage interest payments unaffordable for that period.

“The reality is that if such households are forced into bankruptcy and homelessness, they will become a far greater burden on the state than through providing a time-limited income support.”

Ms Lynch gave committee members an update on the ongoing collective housing complaint by local authority tenants to the European Committee of Social Rights.

The complaint outlines appalling and widespread sub-standard housing issues across twenty local authority housing estates. The tenants were assisted by local housing rights groups and academics in forming the complaints and FLAC though its associate membership of international rights group FIDH lodged it with the Committee. A decision is expected before the end of 2016.