Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The first section of the Sinn Féin motion refers to housing. A lay person looks at all of this in bewilderment. Not so long ago, turnkey housing developments were being sold at full market value throughout the State. Now, houses have halved in value. There is a simple economic rule of thumb that at a time of recession the government should intervene, first, because it creates jobs, second, because it gets the best possible deal for the taxpayer and third, because it prepares the economy for the turnaround. We should be buying houses now. We should purchase all those ghost estates for social housing because they are coming in at half the price of years gone by. We are not doing that.

Instead, we are opting for ten year leases, which is a crazy economic proposition for the taxpayer. This is because of the absence of an overall strategy. Sinn Féin has said repeatedly that we could look at the National Pensions Reserve Fund, twinned with the European Investment Bank potential and private pension funds. It is not only Sinn Féin which says this. It is also proposed by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Sinn Féin talks about a €13 billion stimulus package over four years. A key aspect of that would be the provision of social housing. There are solutions, if we are brave and imaginative enough to look at them.

There are 100,000 people on housing waiting lists at this stage. This is a real crisis, and it brings me to the next section of the motion. A previous speaker said mortgage distress affects only a small number of people. That is an incredible statement for a Deputy to make. One in four mortgage holders is in distress. That is approximately 168,000 households. If we took just one representative from each of those households we would fill Croke Park twice. That is the scale of the crisis. Any Deputy who has their finger on the pulse of their community and listens to their constituents knows this is a crisis. I could talk for the next two hours about conversations I have had with families in Donegal and about people who ring me late at night in total dismay and distress asking if they should hand back the keys of their house. They put impossible situations to me.

These people are just ordinary five eighths, like me. They were not experts on the economy a number of years ago. We believed the economists and our politicians at that time. We believed all the hype in the newspapers. One could not open a newspaper without seeing a property supplement. We read about soft landings. Prices could only go up. We should buy while prices were at that level. We would be crazy not to. That is what people bought into. They were betrayed and they remain betrayed because there is no solution.

This brings me to the final issue in the motion. I sat through 17 or 18 hours of debate on the various Stages of the Personal Insolvency Bill. On the final night, something symbolic happened. The so-called public interest director of Permanent TSB, Mr. Ray MacSharry, told my colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty, there would be no write-downs. Later, Professor Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank, said he was tearing his hair out because the banks will not go after debt.

People at home must be totally bewildered. We have put tens of billions of euro into these banks.

Today AIB has stated it will increase its variable mortgage interest rate but we own 100% of that bank. People are bewildered that there was a solution for the bondholders, for the extremely wealthy gamblers who were so reckless, but the people themselves have been betrayed. One in four mortgage holders is in difficulty. This crisis is fundamental and must be addressed in a focused, urgent and determined fashion. Our motion does not just identify the problem, it offers solutions, as Sinn Féin motions always do. At some point someone must listen and realise the emperor is wearing no clothes.

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