Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)

-----that the Government has not yet introduced necessary legislation. I try to explain that, even when the legislation is in place, structures must be put in place to implement it. We are perhaps 12 months from anything being put in place. Thankfully, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Government, very few people have lost their homes in this country but the Minister of State is aware of the number of people in arrears with mortgage payments. They are consumed with worry and anxiety about the future. The Minister of State is also aware of another cohort that we cannot count - those who ran into arrears over the past 12 months and, if we ever see the new insolvency legislation, could have been rescued. Now they have slipped beyond rescue and out of the net and they are guaranteed to lose their homes. There are also hundreds of thousands of people who can pay their mortgages but they are consumed by anxiety about the future.

The Government parties promised faithfully that they would sort out this problem quickly. It was a central plank of the election campaign. Towards the end of last year the jamboree at Farmleigh was conducted in a blizzard of self-congratulatory publicity. The most concise and direct advice I heard from that meeting of luminaries was from the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who said that we cannot solve the problems of this small country without unwinding the mortgage crisis and that we should give it top priority. The most concise, coherent and practical advice from the discussion at Farmleigh is the advice the Government is determined to ignore. Whoever said procrastination is the thief of time was not exaggerating. If anything, he understated the case because this Government's procrastination has robbed people of peace of mind and their family homes and will continue to do so.

Anyone who harboured lingering illusions that the credit situation in this country was normal had the illusions dispelled by the recent bank watch report by ISME and by the words of the Governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, a few days previously. It is a century and a half since a potato Famine devastated the economy of this country. The effects of the credit famine, which we are now experiencing, are somewhat less pernicious but are no less devastating in their consequences for the economy of the country. It is ironic that the institutions whose financial promiscuity did so much to bring about the problem are now practising a new form of financial parsimony, which is preventing the crisis from being solved. The banks are engaging in an Orwellian exercise. The banks are behaving like former employees of the ministry of truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. They have issued a plethora of reports, studies, interviews and analysis that is encouraging us to disbelieve the evidence before our eyes every day of the week. They tell us there is no credit famine and that the credit situation is normal.

The banks and financial institutions, including Permanent TSB, were stuffed with capital, to use the words of the Minister for Finance. That capital did not come out of thin air but was borrowed on behalf of Irish taxpayers and must be repaid with interest. It was not borrowed because we like the banks, because they are venerable institutions we want to continue ad infinitum or because they are national monuments in need of preservation. It was borrowed because we want banks to lend to the economy as credit is the oxygen of business. The economy cannot grow without a proper supply of credit. The banks have failed to adhere to their side of the bargain. It is a contemptible insult to the intelligence of the electorate for banks to produce reports, as they did until quite recently, saying that a certain amount of people applied for credit, 90% of whom were successful, and to conclude that everything is normal because we have 90% lending. There was not a word about the vast majority who were told not to bother wasting time and money applying or those told that, although they all satisfy the criteria, the bar will be raised to ensure they do not qualify. The attitude of the banks to Irish businesses seeking credit exactly mirrors that of the local Mafia chief in the famous scene from "The Simpsons". The tavern owner approached the banks, who were unhappy with his collateral and did not like his profit projections. He then went to the local Mafia chief who agreed in principle to lend the money but, because he did not like the collateral or profit projections, he would have to smash the tavern owner's arms and legs in advance. That is the attitude of the banks-----

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