Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I absolutely believe that Deputy Durkan is 100% right. A long-standing Government TD is now saying that it is time to call an emergency. The only thing I would disagree on is that it is actually past time to call an emergency in light of what is happening. I agree 100% that the thresholds are too low. A great many hardworking families in my constituency and across the board are trapped in a situation whereby they do not earn enough to be considered by the banks but earn slightly too much to be considered for social housing because the thresholds are so low. The message they are getting is that they do not count. As the Deputy rightly says, renters are paying hundreds of euro extra each month and the vulture funds are again indicating that they are going to increase mortgage rates next month, which means that people will be trying to pay mortgages at rates of 6%, 7%, 8%, 9% and up to 10%. It is wholly unsustainable. I wonder how many of those who are in that situation are going to feature in the homelessness figures in the months ahead because there is nowhere for them to go. It is just not financially viable. It is financially impossible for those people to hang on to their homes. When these people's mortgages were transferred to vulture funds, although many did not fulfil the criteria to be so transferred, they were promised that there would be no impact on the conditions of their loans. My god, have they been left exposed to the vultures again. There are a great many things involved here but we are only asking the Minister to do one thing, which is to explicitly allow more investment to be made in housing under this fund. As Deputy McGrath will know as Minister for Finance, the clear bottom line is that, looking at the years ahead, Exchequer funding is far too low. That is the bottom line as regards what we are talking about today.