Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

The more one looks at this, the more one realises how unacceptable it is that this debate is being limited in the way it has been and that these amendments have come forward so late leaving us with so little time to consider them and put forward further proposals. We are dealing with a serious issue that affects a growing and vulnerable group of people who find themselves with mortgage difficulties.

I agree with the Minister and others that anything we can do to put pressure on the banks to engage with borrowers and people in difficulty is the right and necessary thing to do. However, when we look at this, the onus is almost entirely on the borrower rather than the banks. Correct me if I am wrong, but under this provision, even if borrowers make an arrangement with the bank and comply with that arrangement, they lose a year's mortgage interest supplement because it is not paid until a year after entering an arrangement. Is that correct? Unless it is backdated, it is lost. The Minister should return to this and explain it, because it is certainly not clear here. Also, there are no corresponding measures in the legislation that will compel the lender to engage, but that is where we should put the pressure.

Deputy Collins put it best suggesting that would be the way to go. As soon as somebody finds himself in need of mortgage interest supplement and is granted such a supplement, the pressure should then be on the Government to force the banks to engage with the borrower, or perhaps it should give authority to groups like MABS to do that. We must think carefully about how to do this. We must in some way force the banks to engage. Currently, there is no obligation on the banks to engage or to engage in a reasonable way. Given that the borrower will not get mortgage interest supplement unless he has entered into such an arrangement and has been in such an arrangement for 12 months, the banks have the whip hand to compel borrowers to sign up to an arrangement that might not even suit them well. The conditions may be too difficult, too onerous or unsustainable for them. The banks will want as much as they can get and will want to pressurise the borrowers into agreeing to giving the bank the most it can get from them. The banks have the whip hand in that regard because the borrowers may feel under pressure to sign up to an unsustainable arrangement on the basis that only by doing so they will be entitled to mortgage interest supplement.

There are many problems in this regard and we have only had a short time to thrash them out and consider the full implications. While there is a reasonable aspiration on the part of the Minister to ensure that if we are paying money to the banks, some pressure is applied to the banks. However, it is highly questionable whether this amendment succeeds in that objective. It may have unintended and adverse consequences for borrowers in mortgage difficulties.

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