Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The quantity is there - I will check the quality. Certainly the oral reply was excellent. However, I have not received an answer to the question I posed. The Government should abide by the fundamental principle that no family should lose the roof over their heads. We then need a mechanism to prevent that happening where there is an honest effort being made by the household members, who may no longer include a breadwinner because of the circumstances that have arisen, to do what they can to sort it out. A safety net needs to be put in place to continue the process rather than simply taking court action that seeks repossession and the involvement of a debt collection agency which has no care in the world other than to extract what it can, including repossession if the debt cannot be dealt with.

There is the commitment to the personal debt management agency which would have quasi-judicial powers. A safety net needs to be introduced as quickly as possible to assist people such as the 54 people who have had repossessions and the 119 who surrendered possession voluntarily. We do not know what happened in other cases where people move lock, stock and barrel to Australia or elsewhere and leave everything behind. However, we must provide the support for the thousands of people who are in serious debt arrears. The existing supports are very welcome - we need to look at how the bank restructuring has taken place there, but at present we do not have a bottom line, which I would like the Minister of State to address.

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