Hi Brendan, thanks for the reply.
Both the borrower and partner own a house together (in negative equity of about €70k). A mortgage reschedule has been arranged and full repayments are being made.
In relation to the CU loan, the borrowers mother is a guarantor on the loan and she has been refused access to her account due to the outstanding debt on the loan.
The borrower has a good job, (circa €45k pa), and partner had a good job until redundancy but hopes to get work fairly quickly, (would have been on circa €58K p.a.). Due to very poor decision making, a serious lack of understanding of the implications of overspending years ago and easy access to credit, the couple racked up large debts. Total still outstanding is approx €90k excluding mortgage. For the past 8 years they have being paying back outstanding debts as best as possible taking into account the financial difficulties laid out above.
The hope was to at least pay off this Credit Union loan and some other loans from the redundancy payment and start to work towards getting to a debt free life.
Both understand their responsibilities in relation to their debts and neither wish to walk away from debts but would like some flexibility when trying to come to a settlement.