Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In a situation where Mr. O'Grady's bank is a State-owned bank in receipt of €20 billion of taxpayers' funds and a generation of people were blackmailed into paying extraordinary speculative prices simply to have a home, and they were the victims of speculators rather than speculators, it is extraordinary that AIB has not considered a general write-down to today's value and a downward calibration of the monthly payments. Mr. Duffy said at the beginning that one of his prime aims was to support the economy. The key disasters in the economy are austerity,which has cut demand in our shops and for services, leading to massive unemployment, and the amount of money for which people are in hock to the banks. Mr. Duffy could support the economy by allowing the release into it of huge sums of money from ordinary people if he were to take this more radical approach to restructuring the bank debts of owner-occupiers.