Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour)

I will try to be as brief as possible. On this issue, we should forgo the usual political point scoring and posturing, which is a feature of debates on Private Members' motions. This issue affects far too many people in our society for us to engage in the type of bating we have witnessed in the past. Be they families burdened with large mortgage repayments or businesses struggling to access credit, they and the economy need a resolution to this issue.

There is much to commend in the motion from Fianna Fáil. The history of how we got to this point has little relevance for the families seeking a solution to this issue. Individuals and businesses trying to stay in business are struggling to keep their heads above water. The only thing that matters to the people affected is what the future holds and not what the past has delivered to us.

Every week worried parents struggling to keep their homes contact me. As the previous speaker stated, the banks, Permanent TSB in particular, which owe their very survival to the actions of the Irish State and the Irish people, played a large role in bringing our people to the sorry state in which we now find ourselves. Necessity meant that the banking system had to be saved but the time for pay-back is soon approaching. Justice, and now necessity, demand that.

Unfortunately, attempts to address these matters are not straightforward as in many cases they are interlocking arrangements and, in some ways, are contradictory in their aims. As the Minister, Deputy Noonan, indicated at the start of this week, negotiations are under way on the issue of the Anglo Irish Bank promissory notes. Along side that the Government is negotiating to move tracker mortgages from other banks to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, thereby taking some pressure off the margins of those banks that are playing havoc in the context of the mortgage situation.

As well as helping the banks with the sustainability of their debts, that would also give us an opportunity to put values back into the bank, which then could be realised at a later date through the sale of the State's stakes in those banks. That could raise considerable moneys for the State and for the people of this country. That is the issue because we need banks to be profitable to ensure they no longer require aid from the State. We need them to be profitable to ensure the State can benefit from dividends and, perhaps later, from the sale of some or all of the stakes in the banks but that goal must be balanced by the need to ensure that ordinary families and individuals do not find themselves under undue and unjust financial pressure.

The gap of more than 2% between the variable mortgage rate and AIB and Permanent TSB is punitive, particularly given that normal market forces cannot operate because of, as the motion notes, the inability of people to move mortgages from one institution to another. As normal market forces are not currently present to act as a correction on the activities of Permanent TSB, there is a strong case for intervention by the State, either through regulation or political pressure.

Other aspects of the mortgage crisis, particularly when it comes to arrears, will be alleviated by the Personal Insolvency Bill. These have been partly addressed already by other initiatives from Government such as the mortgage to rent scheme announced by the Minister for housing, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan.

The second part of the motion dealing with the lending to business is a matter of importance also. Businesses need access to lending and the economy needs business to have access to credit to create job opportunities and ensure they can provide strategies for jobs growth into the future.

In recent weeks a constituent of mine came to see me. She is a retailer whose business is holding its own but is currently going through the normal seasonal dip. She requires short-term funding to get over the next two months but it is being denied by her bank. The bank had been given access to large amounts of funding at low rates from the European Central Bank and I understand from certain sources that much of that money is finding its way into commodities such as oil and coffee, which is driving up the costs for working people in society. That funding must be directed towards the real economy and not merely to the next nearest speculative bubble.

The banks contributed in no small part to the current calamity we are now facing. They now have a moral responsibility to aid the recovery of our society from the misery they helped bring about. They can do that voluntarily or through compulsion. The choice is theirs but they must choose quickly because the patience of the Irish people is rapidly running out with regard to this crisis.

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