Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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On Saturday morning last I had two constituents in my office who now are aware that the insolvency legislation has passed. Both of them bought apartments approximately five or six years ago for in the region of €300,000 that are probably, at best, worth €125,000. They have not been able to service the mortgages on those premises because they have lost their jobs and because of other circumstances and they are now in a situation where continuing to reside in these properties is making a bad situation worse. The monitoring, evaluation and reporting plan, MERP, for them was only a deferment or a stay of execution. What they want to do is get out of that property in such a way that they do not have legacy debt remaining in it, and that is what people would hope to see as a result of the insolvency legislation. My question to the Governor, which is indirectly with regard to how the banks engage with this, is what will the Central Bank be doing to monitor this and create some level of accountability with the banking sector in this regard.