Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are certainly willing to learn from what is a totally new scheme. Initially officials from my Department worked with individual cases until we rolled out the national scheme in June. Initially, it was mainly the sub-prime lenders that engaged with the process - the main lenders did not want to know much about it at the start. However, they have now all come in and there is definite traction on it. I do not wish to comment on what the judge said. While I do not want to give anybody false hope, I genuinely believe this is an option that will work for certain families who otherwise would be evicted from their homes or would be in a far worse situation than they would be under the mortgage-to-rent scheme.

It is a genuine solution for those families.

I want to see provision in this respect move as quickly as possible for each individual case but it involves lending institutions, individual family decisions, the voluntary housing sector and the local authorities. It is a complex process to transfer the mortgage through the public system to a voluntary housing association which then rent on to the person who originally had the mortgage. It is a complex system. It has been worked out very carefully. To qualify for it, one must qualify for social housing. One's house has to be under a certain value and one has to have reached the end of a mortgage resolution process with one's lending institution. One would have had to try all the options available to make some kind of settlement in paying one's mortgage. It will not work for everybody but it is a solution for people who are genuinely in that desperate situation where they could stand to have move out of what has been their home. I am willing to see if there is any way we can improve the scheme that we have because all of us in this House want to make sure that we find solutions for the families who are in distress.

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