Irish Bank Evicts Pensioner After $155 Billion Losses: Mortgages

Brendan Kelly’s televised eviction from his Dublin house hit close to home for many of those watching in Ireland, where one in seven mortgages is in trouble.

Bailiffs dragged the shouting, 71-year-old pensioner away from his five-bedroom residence in the affluent Killiney neighborhood last week after he failed to keep up payments on a 2 million-euro mortgage ($2.6 million). It was a rare moment in a country where lenders dealing with about 20 billion euros of distressed loans have seized less than one percent of the properties backing them.