Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I have met people in my constituency office who have 130% mortgages. I would love to see some of those cases going to court where a responsible judge would tell the banks that they had entered unenforceable contracts. I am one of the few in this House who has no fear for somebody going to court because the day of people being afraid of the banks should be over. The banks must do the bidding of the people from now on, not the other way around.

We should not simplistically point the finger at the banks because we all have a responsibility. Several local authorities have repossessed houses in the past year and previously. In some cases they move more quickly and sharply than some of the commercial banks. Some of the sub-prime lenders were very reckless. Many of us have dealt with cases of people whose community welfare officers granted them a mortgage interest subsidy. Some, however, have been refused and gone to the social welfare appeals office. In those cases the community welfare officers tell people they should not have got their mortgages because they were not sustainable and the banks should not have entered into that agreement. Community welfare officers, who are not financial experts, use their common sense in saying that banks were reckless.

In fairness to the banks they have recently been doing more than they want to admit publically. In the past year or two I have heard of many cases in which the bank has taken back equity in a house and let it to the customer so that not even the next-door neighbours knew. The banks probably do not want to say this up front because they do not want to be seen as a soft touch. Those figures are probably well hidden in the bowels of the banks but it is happening because the last thing the banks want is empty houses for sale because then they will lose through negative equity.

There is a high penalty for transferring from a fixed to a variable rate when it suits a person to do so. Local authorities, however, charge the same penalties.

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion. The renewed programme for Government is the way to deal with this problem in the months and years ahead.

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