Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Keane report wants us to be scandalised that writing down rip-off mortgages would amount to €14 billion but the Taoiseach does not even blush when he proposes to gouge the Irish people for at least €47 billion in interest and principal between now and 2031 to compensate the private gamblers in Anglo Irish Bank alone. Negative equity and extortionate monthly payments are a millstone around the necks of not only these 300,000 mortgage holders and their families but also the entire Irish economy, by diverting billions of euro from services and shops that could sustain and create jobs.

Will the Taoiseach take a leap of imagination and policy, for a change, by marking down the rip-off speculative mortgages that people were blackmailed into taking? If the mortgages were marked down to their real value, and the monthly payments were marked down pro rata, a generation would be freed from this nightmare and the burden that is on them. The immense resources that would be freed in such circumstances would regenerate the real economy and sustain and create jobs and services.

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