A 75-year-old man from Tullamore, County Offaly is to stage a protest outside a Permanent TSB branch in Limerick as he prepares to lose his home to repossession.
Tom Roche says he will hold the protest outside the bank on O’Connell St, Limerick to coincide with World Mental Health Day, this coming Thursday, 10th of October from 11am until 2pm.
The vigil-style-protest will be the latest of ten similar vigils held outside PTSB branches Tullamore, Mullingar, Athlone, Longford, The Four Courts in Dublin, Portlaoise, Carlow, Nenagh and Eyre Square in Galway City.
Roche told Gript that he started the vigils in Tullamore on this 75th birthday.
“Tomorrow I’m doing my 10th viral outside PTSB on O’Connell Street Limerick to mark World Mental Health Day because to me evictions, distressed mortgages, harassment from banks, and all that crap is directly impacting on mental health,” he said.
Speaking to the Limerick Leader, Roche explained how he has been living “in fear of eviction” saying that this was not a “pleasant” situation for a man of his age.
He says the purpose of the vigil is “to highlight the level of mental stress PTSB is putting on me and many others as they prepare to issue proceedings to repossess my home and sell our mortgages on to vulture funds for greatly reduced prices,”.
Roche has been experiencing the fallout of a distressed mortgage after falling into repayment arrears after government funding for the environmental NGO he worked with dried up after the banking crisis.
In 2018 Roche told the Irish Independent that the possibility of losing his home was “like a nightmare”.
Then 69 years of age, he said, “I can’t believe at this age of my life I am looking at the possibility of losing my roof. I can’t believe that is happening in the country that I loved, the country that I worked so hard in all my life. I can’t believe it is happening to me. It is like a nightmare.”
Roche says he has worked all his life and has never received a “hand out”.
“I have worked all my life. I have been working since the age of 13, since I left school, always self-reliant, never had my hand out for anything.” he said.
Roche borrowed €150,000 at the age of 59 from this mortgage provider and was given 15 years to make the mortgage repayments.
He purchased a half-acre site near Rhode with his over €70,000 in savings in 2001 after which he was given loan approval from the bank for the €150,000 to build his home.
The carpenter and cabinet maker who previously ran the Just Forests organisation for 30 years fell on hard times when funding for the organisation dropped significantly in the wake of the banking crisis.
As a result, he lost his salary, and fell into arrears.
There was some ultimately short lived good news for Roche when he signed a deal with a Mortgage to Rent scheme that would have allowed to stay in his home for the rest of his days.
The deal was signed In July 2022 with the good news story featured by the Offaly Express.
At the time he said He said this meant that the property “goes back to iCare and when it’s finalised I get to stay here for the rest of my life. I’ll have to pay a nominal rent of about €40 a week,”.
However iCARE later pulled out of the scheme resulting in PTSB informing Roche that they would recommence the sale of the property and would be seeking possession of the house.
He said that the contract had been signed in a solicitors’ office in Tullamore saying that “you wouldn’t believe” how it could have been backed out of saying that it had been countersigned by his solicitor and his accountant.
Roche told Gript that the deal fell through six months after it was signed and that this taken place after projected costs of works on the house, which was built in 2002, were revised upwards from €15,000 to €31,000 in what Roche says was “the space of a week”.
Speaking of his shock and disappointment at the contract not being honoured he said, “six months later, not six days and not six weeks” he got “an email and not even a letter” to say that “the deal had fallen through”.
“In my language, you sign something when the deal is done,” he said.
Roche says he does not accept that the costs of repairs to the property could be the €31,000 sited and said that he wrote to the Financial Ombudsman asking for a review of the case.
He said PTSB have agreed not to repossess his home until the Ombudsman’s findings have been returned, but that he still lives everyday with the loss of his home “hanging there all the time”.