€10,000 Raised In Just Two Days For Kerry Man Fighting To Keep His Home

Ray Flavin, a widowed father of five from Kerry, is currently in a battle with Bank Of Ireland to keep his home after they issued a possession order, despite the bank admitting in February that it overcharged him on his tracker mortgage but would not disclose by how much.

A Go Fund Me page has now been set up by two close friends, and so far the page has raised over €10,000 from donations by more than 320 people who are sympathetic to the distressing situation he has found himself in.

Ray currently works for his father’s coach company but in 2013, as he was working underneath one of the buses, it fell on top of him causing serious injury to his back.

He was in a wheelchair for six months and was out of work for close to a year in total.
“I couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments. I just had social welfare and all that went to keep the family,” he told TheJournal.ie.

He approached the bank to discuss his financial difficulty and his monthly payment rate was eventually reduced, but as he continued to struggle with his repayments, his arrears built up and in 2014 the bank started court proceedings against him.

At this time, he was in arrears of €18,000.

Because Bank of Ireland has not told Raymond Flavin for how long he was overcharged, it is not yet clear how much he may have potentially overpaid on his mortgage, according to the Go Fund Me page.

Raymond’s wife Trish died in early January of a heart attack, aged just 38 years old.

The couple have five children – boy and girl twins aged 5, a boy aged 6, a girl aged 11 and the eldest, a 16-year-old girl.

Ray said the house is now “all my children have left”.