Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

I thank Deputy Donnelly for introducing this Bill. I regret it does not seem possible to have it proceed any further. I have much sympathy with the remarks of Deputy Catherine Murphy on the importance of having Private Members' Bills proceed to Committee Stage and, I would hope, to enactment. I hope this will occur soon, be it in respect of an Opposition Bill or one produced by a Government backbencher.

Of all the people for whom I have sympathy in regard to squandering during the Celtic tiger years, I have most for those in difficulty with mortgages. They were sold a pup and left in awful living conditions. I can hardly imagine the torment of many people over their not being able to make ends meet. There are those who deserve both our sympathy and actions.

This Bill touches on the sorest pressure point of people in their day-to-day lives. For that reason, I strongly welcome the work of the Government on the personal insolvency Bill and other legislation that will help people who are in great difficulty. In my region, south Dublin, there will be a pilot scheme to determine how the mortgage-to-rent proposals will work.

That is due to begin sometime later this month. I will watch carefully to see how it works. It will help some small number of those who are in difficulty with mortgages and their housing situation.

It is important that we consider how we came to be in the situation where housing spiralled out of control both in terms of the amount constructed and the cost of it. In the long term, as well as helping people in immediate difficulty, I suspect that the personal insolvency Bill may be the most important legislation the Oireachtas will enact. If we do not look at what went wrong we are likely to be damned to repeat the same mistakes again. We must consider such factors as the spiralling cost of building land. That, in a sense, is a knock-on of our failure to take heed of the Kenny report in the 1970s, which would have put some control on the price of building land. The fuelling of the property market under section 23 was encouraged by Fianna Fáil Governments. Madness was attached to that. I remember driving through Drumlish in rural Longford with a friend of mine who lived nearby. He said, "Who the heck is ever going to live in these houses - Drumlish is so far off the beaten track?" That is just one example of that absolute madness. The situation was made worse by the banks in terms of throwing money at people, which in its own way fuelled the increase in property prices.

It points to a need for us to think carefully about how we go about things. For example, we need to have brakes on the property market in the sense of trying to prevent property prices increasing. In that regard the notion of introducing a property tax is worthwhile because although any tax is clearly unpopular a property tax would have the virtue of being progressive if it is applied in such a way that those with the greatest wealth and properties have to pay the most and those with the smallest properties pay the least. We must accept that such a tax might have a beneficial effect both in terms of controlling the property market and also as a source of revenue for local authorities. Those two factors should be linked. That goes back to another aspect of the madness of the property boom; organisations such as county councils were happy for the property boom to continue because it was a source of development levies and the Government was happy in the short term because it brought in a lot of money in stamp duty. We must take lessons from those terrible mistakes and build a society where it is possible for people to get a home but without the madness that we have gone through.

I thank Deputy Donnelly for introducing the Bill because it focuses on this important and sensitive issue that must be dealt with as soon as possible. I regret the fact that the personal insolvency Bill is so slow in coming forward although I can understand the reason. I presume it is because of the sheer complexity of trying to draft such legislation. There was clearly no possibility of bringing in such legislation until the banks were recapitalised because it is only through the recapitalisation of the banks that it will be possible to put such legislation in place.

We will get a chance to discuss the insolvency Bill at a later stage but it is important that when the legislation is passed the Minister carefully monitors the behaviour of the banks and the operation of the legislation. I suspect that due to the huge complexities involved the legislation may need tweaking. We must keep an eye on what the banks are doing because we must ensure that they serve the needs of those whom they led down the garden path and got into such terrible difficulties.

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