Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses have explained it well, and it is certainly the take home point I got after visiting the offices in Ennis. I met with Elaine Clifford and her colleagues.

On the figures, if I understand correctly, there were 40 dedicated mortgage advisers. There are now 32. That means 20% have left the workforce because of uncertainty. I fear a lot more will be lost because, using County Clare as the example I am aware of, there are companies tripping over each other to recruit at the moment. People with financial qualifications can snap up any type of job at the moment. However, when I visited the office, I heard they are more invested in this work because they can put faces to a lot of struggling families. There is a strong social dimension. This is not just about crunching numbers. There is almost a counselling dimension to this, if you like, and guiding vulnerable people through it. I worry MABS will lose more because the current risk is these dedicated mortgage advisers will themselves be in financial peril with their own families if they continue with this, which is a tragic irony in itself.

The Minister said the early weeks of 2023 should bring certainty to this. We are now approaching St. Patrick's Day. The Dáil will go into recess after tomorrow. We will come back for two weeks before going into recess for Easter. It is not good enough. The headline figure of €2.246 million is what it costs to have 40 people in employment. If we drill down into that figure and look at Clare, which is the example I gave, the DMA is supporting 130 families. If that is multiplied across all the other DMAs, the support network being provided is immense. The reality is that if this folds or funding ceases to continue into winter months, we will see a huge amount of outright mortgage defaulting. We will see repossessions of homes, families in the dock of the courtroom, passing their keys back over the threshold to bailiffs, and the pathway afforded to them by MABS will be gone. I want this on record and I will be pursuing this in Government.

I will say one final thing. I was shocked when I was in Ennis. I was introduced to all of the staff and they went back to what they were doing. However, I quickly noticed that they were spending huge amounts of time on phone calls to Eir, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB. They were on to everyone. They were having to press option 4, press option 5 or press option 6. It was absolutely crazy. As Members of the Oireachtas, we have access to an Oireachtas specific email with most companies, such as Vodafone, Eir or Bank of Ireland. Most companies, State bodies and semi-State bodies have a small unit that deals with us. That is valued. We are able to pick up queries in the constituency and fire them in to get a detailed response back from the right person. I think it is wrong how MABS needs to do it, and I think this committee could have some oversight on this. Any body or agency with which MABS needs to deal on somebody else's behalf should have a direct line for the MABS agent to get in contact with them. There should be no holding on the phone line for 30 minutes, only for the phone call to drop at the end of it. This is critical stuff. This is people's lives and finances. It is wasteful of MABS's time to be pressing options on the phone and listening to awful music. I do not sit on this committee, but I ask that the committee might lead this out as a recommendation that MABS would have a direct line with all of these bodies that bypasses everyone. Would that be helpful?