Are lenders to be punished for greed?

There has been some speculation in the media recently that solicitor Michael Lynn or companies controlled by him borrowed €26 million this year alone and there have been suggestions that some of these transactions may not have had full security for the respective lenders.

How is it that small borrowers can be made jump through hoops by lenders when they want to borrow relatively modest sums in the hundreds of thousands to buy homes, while this man apparently got access to €26 million?

It wouldn't possibly be that the size of Michael Lynn's borrowing and the resulting profits to me made could have dazzled the normally cautious bankers? Time will tell.

Here's one of the many articles on this topic.

A little less conversation on pensions please

The Government's long-awaited Green Paper on pensions was finally published last week, having been postponed since March and September. You can see it here.

It's frankly disappointing that there's not one hard proposal in it - just an invitation for submissions and debate. This has been done before. Check out this link from the Pensions Board about the National Pensions Policy Initiative. The objective of the Initiative was to facilitate national debate on how to achieve a fully developed national pension system and to formulate a strategy and make recommendations for actions needed to achieve this system. It was started in October 1996.

After eleven years, can we have a little less conversaion and a little more action please?

I've expanded on this theme in the Sunday Business Post here.