Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I welcome members of the sub-committee of the Redress Focus Group. As I am not a member of this committee, I thank the Vice Chairman for allowing me to speak. I spoke briefly to the Chairman, Deputy McGuinness. I am delighted to hear that this committee is taking the subject area seriously. This issue has been in the public realm for over two decades but it has struggled to find a mechanism for it to be taken seriously. This committee is a mechanism. It is an authoritative voice in terms of representation nationally. I was listening to Deputy Jim O'Callaghan online on the way up. He suggested calling banking representatives before the committee. I echo that request. I am sure the members will not be against that idea. I think that would be important. While doing that, I acknowledge that representatives from the Banking & Payments Federation have met the group twice.

I tabled a parliamentary question asking for this to happen. The response stated that the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, and the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, would meet the sub-committee. I have been made aware that the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, was not part of that meeting, but I will speak to her and ask her to meet them as well. The members of redress focus group are very focused and constructive in the way they are going about their business. They have specific requests. They are not interested in getting public platitudes at a committee like this as is clear from the engagement today. As Ms Shovlin said, they are interested in action. That is the first thing that can happen.

Either Mr. McCabe or Mr. Sharkey mentioned that the Central Bank still had not met their group. The Central Bank is integral to this debacle for a grant subvention, the biggest in the history of the State. Mr. Sharkey suggested earlier that this was probably the biggest state subvention in the world. However, people in various situations are getting caught at entry. It is so complex and every single individual has a different set of circumstances, be it demographics, financial or situational in terms of where they are in their life cycle. This is so complex that the Central Bank should take this seriously.

It is a lot of Exchequer funding, but there is no point in having bucket loads of Exchequer funding if people are going to be precluded at the point of entry. That is the issue. My concern with the new scheme is the same as I had with the old scheme. People are in financial predicaments. I am thinking of one particular family where a mother is living in her house on her own. Her daughter is living beside her on her own. Both of their houses have mica and both need demolition. Ms McDade or Ms Shovlin spoke about the credit union. There is 7% or 8% finance in some banks and then there is finance in the credit union as well. It is impossible for many people to get access to the scheme.

I proposed the penalty-free downsizing as a possible fix for that particular issue. I know it was not met with unanimous support and some people had difficulty with it for various reasons. I would not have needed to have called for that penalty-free downsizing if there was proper access at the point of entry. I come back to the main call today by the committee for packages which are needed and which the banks need to promote. When I met the group, I referred to the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine scheme for slotted houses which provided for zero-interest bridging loans. This is not about re-inventing the wheel. It is about bringing people together to work constructively on a cross-departmental basis.

I hope Ms Shovlin does not mind me quoting her. When I spoke to her briefly, she talked about institutionalised bureaucracy. That is all it is. We, as a governance structure are failing people in terms of our institutional bureaucracy where Departments are still working in silos. The responsibility for this issue should not just lie on the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. That is one Department, but this spreads across many different Departments. It goes into the Department of Health in terms of the trauma which is compounded on a daily basis and which is intergenerational. It is a wider issue.

What happens here today can be a step towards trying to make this issue a serious issue and not just an issue where people can make sidebar comments like, "Well, sure it's only them up in Donegal in their big houses." Irrespective of the size of the house, every bad brick that went into those houses was the fault of somebody it was not the fault of the homeowners. I acknowledge that the new scheme is working to make it better. The jury is still out on whether it will work or not. My fear relates to bureaucracy with the processes involved.

The Redress Focus Group is also looking at the insurance companies. They either need to meet with the group itself or appear before this committee. If there are to be any formal hearings in that regard, this representative group, which has worked so constructively in a short period, should be central to any of those deliberations.

As Deputy English pointed out, this has gone on for too long. Even the words we use at this stage will fall on deaf ears. The words have been plentiful and the words have been strong. There has been plenty of compassion towards the issue. It is down to the business of trying to figure this out now. The group has made progress in a short period of time, in a matter of months.

In order to do justice to this we need to take this group very seriously. We need to ensure that there are meetings over time to ensure that those actions are carried out rather than the group coming here and being told its doing a good job by the likes of me. That is not good enough and I know that it is not what the group is about. It is up to us to do justice.

I am delighted to get an opportunity to speak here today, but I am equally delighted that this committee could be a mechanism for trying to co-ordinate and bring so many aspects of this very complex scheme together. Ultimately, we must consider the pensioner who has no intention of going to a bank to ask for a loan because they know they will not get a loan of €60,000 to €65,000, even under the new scheme, which becomes effectively an 80:20 scheme and has from €300,000 to €320,000. We must also consider the person who does not have that finance and the construction sector. If I am a small builder, why would I decide to do a house where there is going to be a bridging finance issue, a deficit? Suppliers do not give credit and are not in a position to give credit even from selling paint or timber because they have to keep the business moving as well. That is also going to be an issue. There are complex knock-on effects. In order to put confidence into the system, this group is asking today for some different packages from banks, 0% finance, for example. While saying that, I still have an issue with it because why should people have to pay €60,000 or 65,000 to bridge bridge a gap when they are already paying an outstanding mortgage and already dealing with a house that has dropped in value? There are so many other issues. For example, there is just one second home being included in the scheme. It is not good enough where there might be a full estate of 20 or 30 rental properties where people cannot apply to the scheme. There are still many outstanding issues, but I think the only way we can try to move this forward is by keeping communication channels open with the central governance authorities.