Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The patience of all of us in respect of this matter is being stretched. The Government has put in place the building blocks. The banks must now engage with people who have distressed mortgages. The legislation in terms of insolvency is in place. The code of conduct is also in place. The banks, as the Deputy knows, have been well capitalised. As I have repeatedly said, they are better capitalised than Swiss banks in terms of their capital reserve ratios. The banks have been given the money to either write down, write off or restructure debts in accordance with the original capital assessments completed more than 18 months ago.

The Central Bank has agreed and accepted the suite of measures put in place to allow each of the institutions deal with this issue. The Government wants this year to be the year when deliberate and extensive actions is taken by all of the financial institutions to bring this over the line and to get on with the task of restructuring people's mortgages, where appropriate. Deputy McGrath is correct that this will have to be done on a case-by-case basis. The banks have been given the tools and capital to address the issue. It is now the task of Government to drive this process forward and to ensure the banks are accountable to the people who have well capitalised them over a period of years. The Government expects extensive delivery on this programme in 2013. The matter is being monitored at Government and departmental level. The Department of Finance is involved on a daily basis with bringing this issue to some conclusion. We expect to see results this year.

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