Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I know. I am pointing out that we have not addressed it yet. The Minister has spoken to the timing issue and not to the cost issue.

As I said on Second Stage, I greatly welcome this additional protection, which is a variation of the Bill I proposed approximately 18 months ago. That Bill sought additional protections when the banks move for possession. I am delighted to see it here. I acknowledge again, as I did on Second Stage, that it is fantastic it is in here. My amendments relate to ensuring it is correct. The Minister has not spoken to amendment No. 7 relating to cost. I will wait to hear what he has to say and then reply.

Let me talk about amendment No. 3. I take the Minister's point that the proposal takes less time than a court agreement and therefore may not need the four months envisaged through the PIP having to go through. It is a fair point that all that is being done is putting together a proposal. However, considerable work remains to be done. One can imagine the complexity of these cases, many of which do not just focus on mortgage payments but relate to multiple lenders. When the bank is going for possession, there will be equity in the house. Typically the bank will not go after the house when it is in negative equity and will just continue to try to bleed the borrower until the house goes into equity and then it will repossess the house.

This is likely to occur where a borrower or borrowers have multiple debts. There is equity in the house and they may be able to service their mortgage. I dealt with such a case in Wicklow last week. However, with the credit card, business loan, car loan, student loan or whatever it is, they cannot go after them. As a result, the bank moves in and declares it is not concerned about the borrowers' unsecured creditors, and because it has a secured loan it is taking the house from them. The idea is that the personal insolvency practitioner is given sufficient time to come back with a sensible counter-proposal. In that case, much careful negotiation probably needs to be done. Inevitably, multiple lenders with very different incentives will be involved. The secured creditor is going after its security, and the credit card company, credit union or whatever will not want to take a 50%, 60% or 70% write-down on the debt.

There is no right answer to this. Two months seems too little, based on the complexity involved. Taking the Minister's point that no agreement needs to be reached, ideally we should leave enough time for the PIP not to have a theoretical proposal but to present to the judge a proposal that has been discussed and is likely to be agreed.