Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Then how can Mr. Brown seriously and in the same breath encourage the Government to cut people's pay, jobs and income to the extent that they are unable to pay their mortgages to the bank? That is beyond comprehension. I find it fascinating and frankly a little alarming that Mr. Brown says there is no correlation any longer between unemployment and mortgage default, the implication, nicely put, being that people are simply not bothered paying. I put it to Mr. Brown that the vast majority of people are not paying because they are having extraordinary difficulty paying. Often this is because of income loss, it is not always job loss. Incomes have been slashed in this country by between 20% and 30%. Even the people who are currently paying their mortgages are often doing so at the expense of not feeding their children properly or not being able to pay other bills. That is the position people are actually in. Therefore, I suggest that for Mr. Brown to separate the economic crisis which the banks helped to cause from the current problem of mortgage default is a sleight of hand that really becomes a justification for Ulster Bank to launch into an aggressive programme of repossessions and legal action.