Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

-----none of which is the fault of the people who took out the mortgages. It is, as again outlined by Deputy Lynch, the fault of the triumvirate, the banks, the developers and the Government, who, in cahoots, totally inflated the price of houses for ordinary people. These ordinary people are now in trouble, but it is obvious from the wording of the amendment that the Government does not care about their plight.

I strongly support Deputy Ciarán Lynch's proposal, which is reasoned and well thought out, which seeks a two year moratorium for mortgage holders given the circumstances in which we find ourselves with hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs. Most of those people have a genuine hope of getting back to work if we can get together and create a programme of national recovery, as outlined by the Labour Party leader this morning. If we get together and figure out how to sort out the problems of the country, there is a prospect these people will be able to begin to pay their mortgages again in two years, but they cannot do it in six months. There seems to be no engagement by the Government with the ordinary people who are affected by the downturn. It is doing everything it can to sort out the problems of the banks and the developers, but nothing for the ordinary people.

See this speech in context