its obvious some people here are affiliated to political parties and fair enough.
If you're talking about me, well, no, I'm certainly not affiliated with a political party. Not even sure who I'm going to vote for; used to be a Labour voter, but, well, you know how it is. One can disagree with extending TRS without sinister political motivations, you know. I disagree with it because it's an inefficient way to address the problem, and because the problem is hardly the country's most critical one right now.
however.
Of all the mortgages in Ireland in the next 5 years
...
This doesn't seem relevant. We're not talking about all mortgages in Ireland in the next five years, we're talking about mortgages taken out 2004-2012, of which 2004-2008 are the main concern as they got a higher rate of TRS, and are more likely to be in trouble (I would think most people who bought in at least 2011 and 2012 are now in positive equity, and from 2009 on rules had tightened up to the extent that most people weren't getting silly mortgages). Mortgages taken out before 2004 had their TRS expire years ago, those taken out after 2012 don't get TRS at all.
So, we're really talking about people who bought 2004-2008. As far as I know, most of the mortgages issued in that period were trackers.
The bottom line is only variable rates in negative equity need real help and TRS extension is the only way to Effectively do this.
No; _some_ people on variable rates in negative equity need real help. Many of them are just fine; bear in mind that 2004 was _12 years ago_. Many of them will make more money now than they did then; some will even have been prudent and only taken out a mortgage that they could easily afford! Some will have been overpaying their capital and will thus have lower mandatory repayments now anyway, and may not even be in negative
As I said earlier, I think there might be an argument for some form of social welfare assistance to those people who the removal of TRS pushes over the edge. Though even then it doesn't seem ultra-high-priority; generally, even if these people fail to make full repayments, they likely won't lose their homes. Repossessions remain very rare. There are also solutions available from the banks (warehousing etc.) though I'm not keen on how seemingly arbitrarily these are handed out. On the other hand, there are people being kicked out of their homes every day as rents increase.
I'm not convinced that the minority of mortgage holders from 2004-2008 who are actually in trouble should be the first priority for assistance, and I certainly don't think just giving everyone who had a mortgage in an eight year period money essentially forever is any sort of solution.