Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I will be brief, as I made many comments on this amendment while the Minister was out of the Chamber. I will boil the issue down to one or two key points.

I will put the €50 million that the Minister mentioned in context without commenting on it, good, bad or indifferent. On average, the €50 million equates to approximately €3,000 per each of the 18,000 households. For that amount, a roof is kept over a family's head and the family owns the house. According to the briefing note that we received from the Department on Monday, the estimated cost of the rent supplement this year is €437 million, which works out at approximately €4,500 for each of its 95,000 recipients. The cost of mortgage interest supplement is much cheaper per claimant. I suspect that the majority of mortgage interest supplement claims are not made by individuals, but by families who bought houses, whereas many rent supplement claimants are individuals. The number of people benefitting through the mortgage interest supplement is higher per €1 million spent. The Minister wants to reduce the rent supplement as well, but that is another day's work. Under the mortgage interest supplement scheme, less money is provided to keep a person's own roof over his or her head than is paid to landlords to provide rented accommodation. I wanted to put these figures in context.

I am utterly opposed to this proposal. Even the Taoiseach has announced a few times recently that people with mortgage arrears are the Government's priority. I am unsure, but it seems that the Government's first Bill on mortgage arrears will cut mortgage interest supplement or, to use the Minister's word, curtail it. That word was used several times in her Department's briefing notes. I understand what the Minister means when she refers to giving the banks €50 million, in that they must do something for it. However, if the Minister is introducing legal curtailments of mortgage interest supplement, she should also impose legal curtailments on the banks as regards how they deal with their customers.

We are still stuck with the idea of changing the law to get the small person while genuflecting to the banks and asking them to introduce a voluntary code of conduct, if they do not mind. They voluntarily signed up to the code of conduct but they have made it clear that they do not want it to be put on a statutory basis in case it affects the rights they believe they possess to enforce mortgages. The Minister referred to the constitutional rights of the lender on several occasions over the course of this debate but I did not hear her mention the constitutional right of the poor householder. Is the Government's sole legal contribution to dealing with the mortgage interest arrears the curtailment mortgage interest supplement? Those who suffered income reductions and are caught with mortgages are the first category everyone wants to help but the people who are at the bottom of the economic pile are those in receipt of mortgage interest supplement because they are on the lowest incomes.

I cannot understand why the Minister is passing legislation to put the boot in the little person without dealing similarly with the banks. We have had the Cooney report and the Keane report but no legislation. We could be considering this Bill in conjunction with legislation to force the banks to act responsibly. The idea of leaving it to the cosy cartel of the banks is not good enough.

I will not rehash what I said earlier about the role of local authorities. They are not part of the bank scheme even though they also lent money to people to buy houses. They generally loaned to those on the lowest incomes because one of their requirements was for a borrower to have two refusals from the banks. My local authority has obtained more evictions in County Laois than the banks because the latter have agreed to forbearance. I tabled several parliamentary questions on this issue but I have not yet received a satisfactory answer. Local authorities have been told to join the scheme but they are not legally required to do so. Certain local authorities are making use of the courts with more frequency than the banks. If county managers were asked the number of court cases they are pursuing over mortgage arrears, the Minister would be shocked at the answer. Some local authorities may have signed up to the code in spirit but others are certainly not following it in practice.

Where are the laws to deal with the banks on foot of the Keane and Cooney reports? The only legislation I can see impacts on the little person. I am shocked that a Labour Party Minister is introducing these measures. Curtailing the lone parent payment from 14 years to seven years is an awful attack on people.

See this speech in context