Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I will confine myself to discussing the amendment because it deals with a specific issue. As I said earlier, it is designed to ameliorate the situation of people who are subject to proceedings for repossession. Of course, none of us wants to see people's homes being repossessed.

As has been mentioned, there is a code subscribed to by the larger banks. All the major lending institutions have subscribed to that code and it is accepted by all involved, whether consumer agencies, the banks concerned or those in this House, that the major banks act reasonably with regard to repossessions. I do not have the figures here, but they prove that small numbers of people undergo repossession on foot of loans with the large institutions - the ones whose names trip off the tongue when one thinks of the main lenders in this country. This provision is designed to stop sub-prime lenders - I do not have to name them here as most people know who they are - from effectively circumventing the procedures in court in order to bring people to the High Court in the first instance.

Deputy Lynch mentioned exclusive jurisdiction. Under a Supreme Court decision, the Tormey case from 1985, the Oireachtas is entitled to confine jurisdiction to a particular court in the first instance. In fact, if the House accepts my amendment there is more of an opportunity for somebody to appeal to the High Court, although if the case is initiated in the High Court there is less likelihood of anyone appealing, and even that would only be on a point of law to the Supreme Court. I do not think anyone would have the wherewithal to embark on that.

I understand what people are saying about the possibility that hearing such cases in the Circuit Court might open people to more scrutiny at a local level, but in the context of the way in which the Circuit Courts operate, they are not, in effect, public courts. Although members of the public are allowed to enter them, they are not public courts in the sense that they are not generally populated by the media. To be fair to the media, the practice thus far, even in the High Court, has been not to identify these people in any way. That is as it should be.

I recommend the amendment to the House.

See this speech in context