Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am sorry the Minister for Finance is not here. I have two questions to put to him through the Minister of State, Deputy Tony Killeen. Is there any connection between NAMA, the banks and the countless numbers of young people about to lose their houses? I cannot see a connection. We spent weeks and months debating NAMA here and perhaps I did not pick it up correctly. We all know that NAMA was set up to save the banking structure and we accept that we cannot run an economy such as ours without a decent banking system. However, we were also wise enough to understand that the bankers, builders and developers would get first call on anything that was going. Having read the Finance Bill as published, if I happened to be a householder or I lived in a house where I had lost my job or my spouse had lost their job and I had a very big mortgage, I see no connection between what NAMA stands for and what I and thousands more like me might have to put up with where we might lose our houses.

I have been around long enough to understand. Based on an independent study a few weeks ago, there are 300,000 empty houses. The courts could be clogged with approaches by the lending agencies to confiscate houses. They know, however, that they are not going to sell the houses, but instead will attract enormous odium if they put people out of their homes. This would be a PR disaster, and as bad as things are for them at present, matters would be much worse.

The hallmark of any Government, regardless of who is in power, will be to ensure a mechanism is found for the cohort of people who took on mortgages and literally did not know what social welfare was. They did not want to have anything to do with it, but wanted, instead, to work every day of their lives. They did not want any help at that stage, but believed they were self-propelled and could pay every penny they borrowed. It was not their fault that they were bushwhacked on the route. That had nothing to do with them, I can assure the Minister of State.

I do not have the time available to me to talk about the people who caused the crisis, but we can rest assured that they will not end up footing the bill. My central message is not about waiving interest for three to six months, but something much more fundamental to try to ensure people can recover within, say, five to ten years. If people are put on the side of the road, the Government will have to go back to the health boards and afford them all types of rental accommodation relief or the county councils will have to build houses for them, thus ensuring that the taxpayers are caught a second time. It is in all our interests to keep people in the houses they so richly deserve to live in.

We all accept that there has to be a serious readjustment as regards the way we do business in Ireland. Some people at the bottom of the ladder have been very badly hit in the public service and also in the private sector. I have always believed that as soon as downward pressure is put on all areas of expenditure such as labour costs, the effects would feed into the economy and bring about a state of competitiveness very quickly. Some things have been reduced in price. Farmers know that prices at the farmgate have dropped, remarkably, as I can attest, being a farmer. If there is not an improvement soon we shall lose the world of jobs in agriculture, but I shall return to this on another day. It does not mean that there is a dent in supermarket profits, however, and that has to be looked at.

If one goes to a solicitor, a doctor, a veterinary practitioner or any of the professionals one will find there is no change in what they charge. The cost of refuse collocation by the local authorities is increasing. If we are to attain the competitive edge everyone is proclaiming as regards doing business in Europe, the cost of all such services will have to come down very quickly.

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