Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I said I was not going to intervene anymore. I just want to finish with a last sentence. I finished my mortgage and concluded it successfully in the past couple of years. I paid 19% and 20%. If you missed a payment, you paid a 23% or 24% penalty, so you never got out of that if you missed two or three instalments. However, I borrowed on the basis of the value of the property at the time, which had a certain impact, and we were scared about it. Many other people were in the same category. Now, however, the value of the property is multiples of what it was then. We are talking about a €70,000 property going to €400,000. It can be €270,000 for ordinary people on limited resources. They are the people who are really worried at this stage now, and whatever has to be done to address their situation needs to be done. There has to be some clarity or hpe with regard to when this will end, about the end of or earlier than 2025, or some other means has to be found. We can have graduated supports from mortgage interest relief or whatever solutions, but we have to find a solution because the value of the property and the amount of money lent to buy the property is such now that it wipes out the family income. Every increase is making it worse.