Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Office of the Taoiseach, which I am proud and honoured to occupy, has the necessary clout but one requires a structure in which to use it. The structure that I use is to chair relevant Cabinet sub-committees which call in agencies, Ministers and banks as necessary to focus on these issues.

Mr. Elderfield was speaking about a mortgage problem causing a bank problem further down the line but the Deputy deliberately misinterpreted him. She is certainly not an unintelligent person but she deliberately misconstrues the way in which legislation is processed, put together and implemented through the Cabinet or Cabinet sub-committees. The personal insolvency Bill has not been delayed because it has not been finalised. The reason it has not been finalised is because of a range of legal, constitutional and other forms of complexity. When it comes before the House the Deputy will have an opportunity to have her say on how facile or simplistic she appears to think it is.

The lifetime projections by Blackrock under the PCAR analysis assumed losses on the mortgage of our banks of between €5.7 billion and €9 billion under base and stress case scenarios over the period from 2011 to 2013. In addition, the banks have achieved better than anticipated prices on the deleveraging of non-core assets and, as a result, have additional capital to cover possible losses in other areas. In conjunction with the Central Bank, the banks are now implementing strategies to assist people with mortgage arrears on a case-by-case basis because there is no uniform solution to these problems. Despite the fact that the Deputy might think otherwise, this requires the banks to sit down with individual borrowers and look at the circumstances in which they find themselves before considering the options and attempting to provide a managed way of allowing people to deal with their mortgages keep the roof over their heads.

That might be too simplistic for Deputy McDonald. Sinn Féin seems to take the view that it can wave whatever magic baton it carries in its bag to get immediate results. That is not life. If the Deputy ever gets the opportunity to understand the way legislation is processed and drafted, she will appreciate it does not happen overnight.

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