Offaly man writes open letter to bank chief over mortgage dispute

Twenty years ago at the age of 55 Tom Roche was lent over €170,000 despite having a net income of only €25,000. He paid back €52,000 and says he offered the bank another €50,000, stating the loan balance could be warehoused until he recovered financially after losing his job.  However, he says the financial institution refused and the mortgage was subsequently sold on.

OPEN LETTER

To:

Mr Eamonn Crowley,

Chief Executive Officer,

Permanent TSB,

56-59 Stephen’s Green,

Dublin 2,

DO2 H489.

December 4, 2024

Dear Mr Crowley,

I have experienced significant financial hardship as a result of a mortgage agreement I entered into with PTSB. The hardship is, I believe, a direct result of Permanent TSB’s reckless lending practices at the time the loan was granted. My hardships have been further compounded by your recent transfer of my distressed mortgage to the vulture fund Mars Capital Finance without my permission. You have transferred my personal data to an entity with whom I have not entered into a contract. Whilst I may have given consent to have some of my data transferred to a third party the consent was given in very restricted circumstances.

Having regard to the recent controversy on car loan finance which has engulfed Bank of Ireland, I believe that PTSB failed to keep me abreast of all the relevant facts with the result that I was unable to make an informed decision when I drew down the loan in 2004.

For instance, PTSB had a duty to inform me that along with other banks it had a policy of delaying the recognition of losses and this practice was also adopted by the major banks across Ireland and the UK. I would certainly not have borrowed money if I had known that the banks were shortly to announce that the losses they were concealing were considerable, as NAMA has shown.

It is quite obvious that a banking crash would emerge and cause devastation for customers who bought property with borrowed money. The result of this was that I was given a loan which was impaired at the date it was advanced but PTSB chose not to inform me because it had decided to delay calculating and recognising such losses.

Furthermore, in 2004, Permanent TSB approved a mortgage loan of €172,000 despite the fact that my net annual income at the time was only €25,000. This represents a loan-to-income ratio seven times my net income. This meant that as a single person aged 55 years, before any other utilities, food, heating, or personal expenses, 50% of my income was debited from my account each month by PTSB to service the mortgage loan. I believe that a responsible lender would have recognised that paying half one’s income to service a mortgage loan was unsustainable. PTSB’s decision to advance the loan, constitutes a clear breach of the implied duty of good faith inherent in our contractual agreement. It was objectively unreasonable to believe that I could repay such a substantial sum given my income. From my point of view, clear evidence of reckless lending practice by PTSB.

I had €52,000 paid back off my mortgage when the financial crisis struck in 2008. Since falling into arrears I have done all in my power legally to deal with my distressed mortgage. In 2017, through the offices of Alan McGee, a personal insolvency practitioner (PIP), I offered PTSB €50,000 and asked you to warehouse the balance, not write it off, but warehouse it until I recovered financially–you refused. I then went down the mortgage to rent (MTR) road. In June 2022, I reluctantly signed over ownership of my home to PTSB and housing charity iCare, in what I was let to believe was agreement by both those parties to keep me in my home. Six months later I was informed by email that the deal had fallen through.

In September 2024, through the offices of MABS in Tullamore, I applied to PTSB to re-enter the mortgage to rent (MTR) program. PTSB blocked my application. In reply to that PTSB decision, MABS wrote, ‘It appears to me that these requests [from PTSB] are outside of what we believe to be the normal Mortgage To Rent process and I should be obliged to receive your response in writing so that I can progress with the case.’ To date you have not replied to MABS and instead sold my mortgage at a greatly reduced price to MARS Capital Finance in November 2024.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Roche,

Rathcobican,

Rhode,

Co. Offaly.