Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is where I am going to be a little critical of the Irish Council for Social Housing. I ask the witnesses to take it in a positive way because we are all here to help people with a housing problem that needs to be dealt with. I will make up a figure. Let us say a house is worth €300,000 and the Irish Council for Social Housing takes it over for €160,000. That is figure with which it deals. I do not believe the bank formally writes off the negative equity of the person in question who is the meat in the sandwich. Constituents have spoken to me about the massive sting in the tail about which nobody had told them. What is most worrying is that the Irish Council for Social Housing which has dealt with all of these cases is telling me that it cannot answer on this fundamental aspect of the scheme because it is confidential between the bank and the person who is participating in it. The Irish Council for Social Housing is a fundamental link in the chain. Everybody sitting around the table should know what is involved. I am telling the witnesses that they need to be aware of the full financial implications of any arrangement in which the Irish Council for Social Housing is involved, not just from its point of view because that is a silo mentality. Where will it be down the road if the bank in my example comes back to the person concerned to ask for the other €140,000? I am disappointed that the position is not clear cut. The Irish Council of Social Housing should know the full picture of the entire financial arrangement, not only the bit that affects it. The people who have been on to me are probably right in what they have said.