Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of this motion tabled by my Labour Party colleague, Deputy Ciarán Lynch. It is astonishing that people would speak with apparent compassion yet be ready at 8.30 p.m. to vote down a motion. If there was an ounce of sensitivity and reality shown for the position of people who are threatened with repossession of their homes, the Government would accept this motion. It would make whatever changes it wished to it. It is a modest proposal. It involved bringing forward a scheme which would address the issue and put proper obligations on the banking system, yet the Government will not do that.

This motion is being debated in the middle of the Report Stage debate on the National Asset Management Agency Bill. That is interesting and tells one a great deal. When we conclude the NAMA Bill this week we will ask ourselves if anything has changed. The Government now has a chance to show that something will change, that is, the relationship of banks with those who are relying on having a roof over their heads, something that they call their home. As Deputy Stagg said, it is important to realise that the home which provides for looking after one's partner and one's children is totally different from other assets. The word "home" is different from a principal private residence and has nothing to do with getting one's foot on the first rung of the property ladder. The word "home" is about children, communities and participation in education. That is what is at stake, and the Fianna Fail-Green Party Government is doing nothing about it. It is saying it will go to the banks that broke this country and ask them to be kind to their mortgagees and try to behave a little better and so forth. There is no statutory obligation in the NAMA Bill that will put any lean on the banks in regard to mortgage holders. That opportunity is not being taken. Even the intention of doing something beyond that will be refused tonight by all those who are pouring out compassion but in the end it is their feet and their fingers that will count in terms of how they will vote at 8.30 p.m.

In regard to the scheme proposed in this motion, I want to be immensely practical about this. Those who end up in financial difficulty will often be couples where both partners were working. They will both have been forced into the housing market and forced to take an excessive mortgage, badly, and sometime fraudulently, assessed, driven by the banks and the developers and in many cases one or other partner will lose their job. These are the people who are in difficulty. They have a fictitious relationship with the concept of housing.

As to what is to happen to them, people have referred to MABS and so on. MABS is doing a useful job but it is under-resourced. It can only deal with a small number of cases. Are we to wait for all the children to be out on the side of the road before we act? We could take measures such as creating the capacity for a person to move from having a mortgage to having a lease and being a tenant. In the NAMA legislation there is no dividend that the Green Party spoke about, for example, that local authorities could take some of the land on which houses have been built or even the vacant houses and use them to reduce the housing list or to deal with people who may be coming on to the housing list. The same people who we are dealing with in the NAMA legislation, forced mortgages on to people who did not want them. Instead of giving people a mortgage that was two and a half and three times their income, it gave mortgages that were ten and 12 times people's incomes. I refer to greedy developers who are not builders. Builders are good decent people who put one brick on top of another. It was the developers who hoarded land at exorbitant prices, fuelled on by banks, which knew that they were talking to a Government that liked that kind of thing and who would contribute to the party, who created this disaster, which involves couples now in difficulty. The children of these couples and the partners of these couples who have been failed by the economy are not the people who should be at risk. Tonight, at half past eight, even the intention to do something will be voted on. In the NAMA legislation we will see where, in fact, the Government stands - with speculative bankers rather than with those whose homes are threatened. 8 o'clock

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