Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not so sure about the insolvency bodies. FLAC is one we should meet. We should meet representatives of people experiencing mortgage difficulties, which includes two categories of people. One group of people were busy during the recent election in my constituency putting stickers on posters and that kind of thing. They call themselves the New Land League. I want to emphasise that I do not hold any brief for people who do not wish to pay at all. It is not in our interest to hold a brief for people who do not wish to pay at all. It is in our interest and the interest of our society to ensure that we give careful consideration and support to those who are attempting to do their best and meet their payments to the best of their ability, very often at great sacrifice to themselves and their families. We most certainly need to support them. The bodies we need to discuss that with are the lenders. The time has come to have at least one slot where we can deal with them directly. By all means, if somebody wants to come in and make their case, I have no difficulty with that but I would prefer to do so privately. We all do our constituency work privately. People do not really want to have their private affairs aired in public if they can avoid it at all so we must respect their privacy. The lending agencies need to be brought in on that issue and so does the Central Bank because unregulated third parties are in control of quite a number of mortgages throughout the country at present. It behoves us to try to ensure, in so far as we can, that the rules of the Central Bank on lending and repossession and rights to houses and mortgages are observed by the unregulated third parties and that the unregulated third parties are regulated.

This relates to some of the things that have already been said by Deputy Coppinger and others. I believe there is an obligation on us to ensure that "unregulated" third parties recognise the need to treat the people with whom they are dealing with respect, honesty and fairness.