As per the Central Bank of Irelands Residential Mortgage Arrears and Repossessions Statistics: Q3 2015, 12.3% of all Irish mortgages are in arrears. A total of 92,291 (12.3%) of accounts were in arrears at end-Q3, a decline of 6 per cent relative to Q2. The number of accounts in arrears over 90 days at end-September was 65,584 (8.7% of total), reflecting a quarter-on-quarter decline of 6.7%. This represents the eighth consecutive decline in the number of PDH accounts in arrears over 90 days

Buy-to-let (BTL) mortgage accounts in arrears over 90 days decreased by 4.5%during the third quarter of the year. At end-September there were 15,275 BTL accounts in arrears over 720 days, with an outstanding balance of €4.6 billion, equivalent to 17.4% of the total outstanding balance on all BTL mortgage accounts.

What can I do to reduce arrears?

The first step is to set aside time to take an objective look at your finances. Write down your income, your bills, money you need to pay regular expenses and all of your debts (including your mortgage or mortgages). This information will help you to be rational about how much financial difficulty you’re facing and it will also enable advice agencies (or your mortgage lender) to propose potential solutions to you.

The second step is to cooperate with your mortgage lender. If you’re in arrears with your mortgage, perhaps being regularly chased for payment that you cannot afford, your mortgage lender might be the last organisation that you want to speak with. However they are subject to requirements and targets to resolve mortgage arrears problems amongst their clients. More importantly, by cooperating with them you’ll buy yourself much more time to identify options to get back into a stable financial position in the future.

If you fail to cooperate with your mortgage lender they’ll be able to take action, up to and including repossession action, much sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

Once you’re cooperating with the mortgage lender they need to follow a defined process. This is known as MARP (the mortgage arrears resolutions process).