Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On when the referendum will be held, I have to await the advice of the Minister of State concerned based on the discussions he has had in the past number of weeks with his colleagues in the House. When he reports back to Government very soon it will enable us to make a judgment as to the best way forward.

On the second matter, in Ireland, compared on a pro rata basis to other countries, thankfully there is a very small percentage of repossessions, many of which relate to hand-overs or the sub-prime market. I understand there are approximately 870,000 mainstream residential mortgages out of a total of 1.4 million homes in the country. The statutory code of conduct and the various measures which have been introduced were a result of the work completed by a committee that was appointed by the Government to determine how we could improve and extend grace periods for people in difficulty and find solutions based on people engaging directly with financial institutions.

It was decided they would operate and deal with those issues in a manner consistent with the code of practice. For many people it has been a practical way in which their circumstances can be factored into repayment scheduling, etc. It is an ongoing issue and a lot of work is being done by MABS and others. Various measures, such as mortgage interest subsidies, have been taken which have been helpful but the ideal situation is for people to return to repayment schedules consistent with the terms and conditions of their mortgages.

Some people find themselves, unfortunately, in understandable difficulties because of their circumstances. The way we have found to engage between the financial institutions and those who have mortgages in difficulty has proved to have practical effect and success.

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