Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

It comes together with the Central Bank's procedures. There is a pretty strong policy unit in the Department of Finance. We brought in the expertise that was in the National Treasury Management Agency. There is a banking policy unit there now. We are going to drive these recommendations. I am not saying these are the only recommendations we are going to drive. Mr. Keane did a very good job in an unemotional way. His group produced a series of workable proposals. If we can get them moving forward, they will help many people. It is not a complete answer. If any of the Deputies opposite can come up with solutions that I can add onto this list, I will take them on board. We will analyse them. If they are workable, we will add them on. We will put them into the portfolio.

We are not in the business of coming in here just for the sake of talking about it. This has to move forward. This has to move to interventions very quickly. We already have a commitment from the Minister for Justice and Equality, who has been told to prioritise the insolvency and bankruptcy legislation. He is doing that. He is far up the road with it. The Minister of State, Deputy Penrose, is already designing two pilot schemes on local authority involvement and housing agency involvement. The Department of Finance has been instructed to engage with the banks immediately to make preparations for them to use the portfolio policy instruments when they are resolving mortgage situations. There are other things we have to do. I have not yet figured out how we will recruit 100 experts, how they will fit in and how they will relate to the Money Advice and Budgeting Service. The concept is very clear. When we move it along, move out of the debate and consider the outside representations that have been made, we will put an implementation group in place and go forward with it. This is practical stuff. This is not theory. We have to move on it. All Deputies know the difficulties families are facing, so we have to move on it.

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