Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Ciarán Lynch for tabling this motion. It seems hard-pressed home owners do not have the same direct line to the Government that the bankers have even when they end up bankrupting the State's largest banks.

This Labour Party Private Members' motion seeks fairness and protection for the people bearing the brunt of the economic catastrophe for which this Government, the developers and the bankers are largely responsible. When one engages in dodgy dealing, bringing the banks to their knees one is retired to a golf course. However, those who have lost their jobs or were panicked into getting onto the mystical property ladder by a coalition of developers, mortgage lenders, Fianna Fáil politicians and newspapers, live in fear of being pursued to the fullest extent of the law.

A potential crisis is looming. The numbers of mortgage holders estimated to be in arrears is roughly 35,000. This includes families with young children, many living in half-finished estates on the edge of towns far from where they used to work. Last Monday, we witnessed the largest number of home repossession for the year so far, 18. The banks which are to avail of the NAMA bailout are merely waiting for the ink to dry on the transfer of toxic debt to the State before they begin vigorously pursuing those who have mortgage arrears. They do this to shore up their asset base to make themselves more appealing to the stock market, not for the good of the country to which they are now beholden for bailing them out. Neither do they have any concern for unfortunate mortgage holders who cannot keep up with their repayments.

The core value of the Labour Party's motion on which we will vote tonight is that whenever possible the family should be assisted to continue residing in its own home. It is of no benefit to the bank to evict someone when they will not be able to sell the house. It would be much better and more responsible to attempt to establish a new mortgage agreement, one which can be met in the longer term. It is certainly of no benefit to the State if we see waves of people evicted from their homes. Thousands are already waiting on social housing lists across the country, some for almost a decade. The McCarthy report threatens to close family resource centres and our suicide prevention strategy was recently exposed as a sham by a report in the Irish Examiner. In short, as a society we are not ready for the wave of repossessions that are likely to occur in the New Year once NAMA is whipped through this House.

This motion seeks some fairness for hard-pressed mortgage holders. Where they are trying to pay they should be given time and space from the fear of eviction and the spectre of sleeping rough, since we have never implemented all of the recommendations of the homelessness strategy. In many cases the banks and other mortgage lenders, not in NAMA, went crazy in sub-prime lending. I know of one case where a woman on a community employment scheme was given a top-up mortgage of €170,000. She never had any real chance of paying it back. Now the benevolent mortgage provider is looking for its pound of flesh. This means leaving this woman and her children homeless.

Surely some of the Government backbenchers are in touch with the real world. While listening to some of them this evening, I became convinced they will be supporting this motion. Every day at our advice clinics we meet the people who, having lost their jobs, see no hope in the short term of keeping up repayments. These people need assurances that they will not be evicted and end up on the homeless list. Our responsibilities and duties are to everyone in the State and not merely to the well connected. These people must be given some breathing space.

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