Fianna Fáil is calling on the Central Bank to make sure banks focus on solutions that work when dealing with long term mortgage arrears cases.

Finance spokesperson, Michael McGrath, was speaking after the Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan confirmed to him in correspondence that he "continues to have concerns that some restructures offered may not be sustainable".

Deputy McGrath said: "I firmly believe that the banks are using restructuring options with a poor success rate, such as arrears capitalisation, in too many mortgage arrears cases. This has been done merely in order to meet the required number of offers of a sustainable solution under the MART Programme.

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"It is essential that the banks are forced to re-open these long term arrears cases as they are quite likely to be in the firing line for repossession. The banks must not be able to hide behind claims that they have attempted to put a solution in place when it is now clear that the nature of the solution put forward was entirely inadequate in many cases. There has been a significant step up in legal action on the part of banks since the start of the year with warnings of a wave of repossessions coming in the months."

(CD/IT)