Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Would the Minister ask the director of consumer affairs in the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority to undertake an investigation of this? Like the previous question on shopping, what we are looking for is positive signals where a consumer is in a fixed-rate mortgage. The Minister must remember he told me yesterday that at the end of December last there were €147 billion in house mortgage finance in this country. I do not know whether he knows how much of that is in fixed-rate mortgages and for what duration. While everything is so flat and today's figures for the drop in spending are so bad, the Minister must identify actions which will show consumers and mortgage holders that there is hope for them, that something that has worked out as being very unfair in the current climate can be investigated and addressed fairly rapidly. That is how we will start to generate consumer confidence and get people spending again.

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