A new, updated Guide, published today, could help 20,000 Irish families still in mortgage distress, many as a continuing legacy of the crash of 2008.
In an op-ed penned for the Irish Examiner, Julie Sadlier, a solicitor who has been working with people in mortgage distress facing the prospect of home repossession, writes that a recent High Court judgment offers a “ray of hope” for borrowers.
Prepared by the Abusive Lending Practices Project, April 12, 2019
For a PDF version of this explainer, please click here.
Key Findings
County Registrars must conduct assessments for unfair terms in compliance with the Unfair Contract Terms Directive in all possession cases involving consumers and delete unfair terms, without being asked.
Milestone decision determines that courts are required to assess mortgage contracts for unfair terms and determine if it is proportional to enter a possession order in each case.
In a recent milestone decision, the Irish High Court has confirmed that EU Law protects people at risk of losing their home in Ireland.
In a Letter to the Editor published in The Irish Times, Dr. Padraic Kenna, Director of the Centre for Housing Law, Rights and Policy at the Law School NUI Galway and an Abusivelending.org partner, explains that many mortgage contracts enforced by ECB-supervised institutions in Irish courts contain unfair contract terms, and violate EU consumer law.
“European human rights law…says that if there’s an interference with your home that you should be able to consult the law and to see what the parameters are that make the difference between you staying in your home and getting kicked out of it but there’s nothing in our law that documents that,” says Irish solicitor Fred Logue, principal of FP Logue Solicitors. “And that’s a clear breach of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
In a recent article published in the Law Society Gazette, Dr. Padraic Kenna, housing rights academic and an expert with abusivelending.org, examines how some recent legal commentary and case law seeks to limit the impact of the European Union’s Unfair Contract Terms Directive (UCTD) in Ireland. In particular, he considers the new focus on the role of the mortgagor’s solicitor.