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

I add my support and the support of the United Left Alliance for this amendment. We should all be on the same page, that the purpose of the legislation is to lift the burden of unsustainable debt from the backs of ordinary people who found themselves in difficulty through no fault of their own, simply because they were trying to put a roof over their heads in a market that had gone out of control. Those people deserve relief. It is right that legislation should be passed to offer them some relief. It is also reasonable that people who, in many cases, were actively encouraged by their banks and by advertising on television at the time to invest, to buy investment property for old age or to put their savings away, might have bought one property to let. It is reasonable to offer those people some relief. Such people are not big speculators and all of those people are captured by the threshold of €1 million. Above the threshold of €1 million, I do not see how we are talking about anyone other than professional speculators, who were speculating in the property market hoping to make large profits from the crazy property bubble that had developed and speculation in land and property. They were borrowing crazy amounts of money to pump up the bubble and I do not see any moral or economic justification for giving such people relief. I am interested to hear why the threshold is set at €3 million. Most people feel the ordinary housebuyer and the person who is doing reasonable things but was caught up in the extraordinary situation that developed during the boom, should get relief. The idea that speculators or those who were looking to profit from the market in a big way should get relief is not acceptable to most people. Legislation should not be used to provide relief to such people. I urge the Minister to accept the amendment and, if not, to give some explanation as to why not.

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