Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes, absolutely. I do not take issue with what you said.

In raising these issues I understood the point was to try to get information and have some clarity around some of the matters involved. I tabled three questions on different issues: the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears, the Economic Management Council, and the Cabinet sub-committee on health. These are three major areas of work. As the conversation has taken a certain direction, I will start with the issue of mortgage arrears.

In response to a question from another Teachta, the Taoiseach said he was not that this was moving fast enough. When he announced the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears in March, he said more or less the same thing. He said he was frustrated that we had not been able to move as quickly as we wanted to tackle the mortgage crisis. Since then, we have learned that 160,000 families are in mortgage arrears.

I will make a number of suggestions if it is in order to do so. Has the Government - not the sub-committee - considered capping interest rates for those on variable rate mortgages to prevent the banks piling on even more pressure? Will the Taoiseach elaborate on expanding the remit of the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears, to which he referred?

There is considerable dependency on the part of the Government on the goodwill of the banks. While I was not at the committee meeting, I read the reports of the disdain with which a bank's CEO treated the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. He refused to answer on this very issue of mortgage arrears. He stonewalled the appropriate Oireachtas authority and he would not even confirm his salary. This is what we are dealing with.

While the Taoiseach might have outlined this in his preliminary answer, does he intend calling in the representatives of the banks again and, if so, when? In earlier references to the Personal Insolvency Bill, the Taoiseach said it would allow the banks to engage. Has he discussed any of this with the banks, and what has their response been thus far?

At the height of the Celtic tiger, Sinn Féin argued that the surplus wealth should be socialised and put into public services, schools, infrastructure and hospitals in a way that would sustain jobs. We were laughed out of it, dismissed and lampooned. There is no problem with socialising the debt, however. There is no problem with expecting ordinary taxpayers, working people, 500,000 unemployed people and the elderly to carry the burden. That is why these issues are so crucial in terms of how we come to tackle them. I would like to get some clarity from the Taoiseach as to whether it is reasonable to impose a cap on variable mortgage interest rates and engage with the banks to ensure they do what they are supposed to be doing now that they are mostly funded and owned by the taxpayer.

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