Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe on his way to Cabinet on Monday. Image: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.ie Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe on his way to Cabinet on Monday. Image: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.ie MINISTER FOR FINANCE Paschal Donohoe has said he “cannot mandate” how banks evaluate customers in receipt of the temporary wage subsidy scheme, amid reports that customers have had their mortgage approval pulled because they were on the scheme.
For many people, their income will not have dropped under the scheme and the government has said the initiative was vital to keep people in a job where otherwise they might not have had one given the sharp, sudden shock of Covid-19 and the restrictions that followed. Mortgage applicants, who are customers at a number of different banks, have told TheJournal.ie that they’ve been unable to draw down their mortgage because at least one of them is in receipt of the wage susbidy scheme.
I’m feeling very down. What was all our hard work and savings for? The people who have mortgages – the banks said they can get a break. We’re here begging to pay, we want to give them money. They’re not letting us. I just don’t get it. The main banks had denied having a blanket ban on refusing or putting on hold applications from people in receipt of the wage subsidy.
Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty has written to the five main banks over the matter while Labour’s finance spokesperson Ged Nash had previously urged Minister Donohoe to take action on the matter. Whilst I completely acknowledge the seriousness of the issue you have raised and its impact on those affected, what I cannot do is mandate how temporary payments received under the Wage Subsidy Scheme are treated in lending sustainability evaluations by regulators and lenders. The minister said the banking crisis of the last decade had been fuelled by “unsustainable lending”.