Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minster mentioned that some of these mortgages are wrapped up in large loan books. All we need to do is to put a barcode on each mortgage so that individual mortgages can be ascertained. It is not rocket science. What we are looking for is transparency in this process. Transparency is good for the citizen and for the management of the economy. For example, on Monday I had a look at the share register of Siteserv shareholders. Many of them are hidden behind brokerage firms, so one cannot see the names of the individuals who were involved in the share transactions. I asked KPMG whether in its review it will be able to see exactly who were the shareholders behind those brokerage firms. It said it would not. That lack of transparency will make the review that the Government is involved in deficient. KPMG will not be able to ascertain why there was a transaction spike in the months before the sale of Siteserv. The problem is that we only seem to realise transparency is important after the problems have occurred. All this amendment suggests is that we build transparency into the system as soon as possible. Transparency is not a tool against strategic default. There are many other ways to prevent families or individuals from defaulting strategically on their mortgages. Keeping them blind to the fact is not a tool. This boils down to a hierarchy of priorities. Do we provide full transparency and give families the ability to understand what is going on with their own houses, or do we allow these firms to profit in these scenarios? We need to level the playing field.