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

There have been three days of proceedings in the committee with four major bankers. All we have been doing, to put it crudely, is poking at a lightly formed scab over a deep wound that continues to fester underneath. Arising from the banking system that Mr. Masding said he grew up with and which is the only one he knows is an utter disaster from the orgy of speculation and profiteering. Now the collapse in the economy is affecting a generation of people, not just those in arrears of 90 days but also those who are not in arrears and are desperately striving to make their payments. Is it not obvious that Permanent TSB, as a State-owned bank, albeit by negative necessity, should be discussing a global response to this situation with the Minister for Finance and the Government instead of this ridiculous system of putting everybody through a wringer and, at the end of the day or perhaps at their graveside, giving people some type of write-down?

Is the obvious solution not that all banks, along with the Government, should have a policy of a general write-down to today's values of people's homes, with the monthly payments written down accordingly? Is it not the only sustainable solution to give people back their lives and to give back to the economy some of the billions of euro now going into these enforced mortgages and ruining our shops and services, etc.?