Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)

I thank Deputy Ellis for raising this very important matter. I share, as does the Government, his concern about the many people in our society who are in difficulty with their mortgages.

The Government is acutely conscious of the difficulties many households are facing in terms of mortgage arrears. In October 2011 we published the report of the inter departmental working group on mortgage arrears which report, as Deputies are aware, was subsequently the subject of an extensive Dáil debate. There is no question of persons eligible for social housing being barred from local authority social housing lists. I wish to state that clearly.

The implementation of the report's recommendations is a key part of the Government's ongoing efforts to tackle mortgage difficulty. A steering group, chaired by the Department of Finance, has been established to oversee and drive the overall implementation of the report's recommendations and report regularly to the Economic Management Council and to Government on this. In addition to the Department of Finance, the steering group consists of senior representation from the Departments of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Justice and Equality, Social Protection and Public Expenditure and Reform. The Central Bank is also represented on the group.

Separate working groups have also been established to progress the individual work streams of this broad work area and these groups report to the overall steering group. Significant progress has already been achieved across a number of the individual work areas. The Minister for Justice and Equality will very shortly publish the heads of the personal insolvency Bill. On the issue of mortgage to rent, I have advanced work with a number of lenders and an approved housing body to pilot a scheme in order to test the practicalities associated with such a measure in advance of a wider roll-out. I reiterate to the Deputy there is good progress in this area.

Regarding engagement with the banks, the Central Bank, as the regulator of credit institutions, has now received mortgage arrears resolution strategies and implementation plans from all mortgage lenders and these are being considered. Work has commenced on the necessary steps to put in place the mortgage advisory function as recommended by the interdepartmental group. In addition, my Department had taken steps previously to take account of the critical interface between the Central Bank's mortgage arrears resolution process and the social housing needs assessment process. The previous situation, whereby a household in arrears effectively needed to be made homeless before a local authority could carry out an assessment of social housing need, clearly made little sense in our new economic circumstances.

New provisions under the social housing assessment amendment regulations, introduced in July 2011, now require a local authority, in determining a household's need for social housing support, to consider whether the household's mortgage has been deemed unsustainable under the mortgage arrears resolution process set out in the Central Bank's code of conduct on mortgage arrears. In effect, this means assessment of needs can be carried when there has been an assessment of the difficulties of the mortgagee.

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