Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That provides an incentive for banks to sit down with clients to deal with their particular problems by means of the wide variety of opportunities such as those outlined in the Keane report and elsewhere to restructure and re-engineer their mortgages which are in distress.

The Deputy's rant about evictions and house repossessions is nonsensical. I note that even his own spokesman on finance, when pressed in a recent interview, said repossessions would take place in a small number of cases - this is how everyone understands it to be - where no effort had been made to repay mortgages in cases where it was possible to repay them.

I reiterate for the Deputy that 65% of property tax revenue this year, rising to 80%, will be retained by the local authorities in the areas in which the property tax is paid for the provision of services and infrastructure.

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