Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. There is a problem with contacting the finance section of the local authorities. We can talk to them until the cows come home, but if someone should be paying €150 per week in mortgage repayments yet is only earning €230 per week, then that person can only pay €40 or €50. That differential of €100 is mounting up in the local authority balance sheet and on the account of the person who has taken out the loan. The room for manoeuvre for local authorities is very limited. Local authority officials in different counties tell us they have very little room to manoeuvre because it is showing up on their balance sheet. They do not have a pot that they can dig into, but a revenue account which is becoming tighter and tighter. The Minister of State knows that from dealing with other local authorities. We have to give some relief to take the pressure off both the home owner and the local authority.

I mentioned the case of local authority mortgage arrears levels in Laois and compared the three different kinds of loans, namely, the shared ownership loan, the annuity loans and the affordable housing loans. The figure is 21% in Laois, but the Minister of State's general figure is 15.08%, which means that the levels are lower in other counties across the State. I am not disputing the Minister of State's figures, which mean that one in seven local authority mortgages is in arrears, while one shared ownership loan in three is in difficulty in my county. We have to do something about this problem.

The Minister of State said that the review group report back at the end September. What is the outcome of that review? When can we see it in this Chamber? What kind of measures are being considered? Do the Minister of State and his officials understand that a sense of urgency is needed for this? We do not solve problems by putting them off. This has been put back for the past three or four years, and I thought the Minister of State would take it up when he got this job. I hope he will do so and I am taking him at his word that he will do something about it.

Surely the most important thing is to keep people in the family home. This suits no one. There are four sets of losers when people are put out of the family home: the family, their neighbours, the local authority and the Government. Does the Minister of State agree?

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