Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I thank Deputy Michael McGrath for tabling this motion and for his ongoing work on this issue, which is one of the most serious we are facing in this country at present. I compliment him on the mortgage resolution office Bill, which he wrote along with our colleague, Senator Thomas Byrne, and details of which were announced yesterday. The biggest difficulty we face as we go forward is the mortgage issue, specifically the debt arrears of families and individuals.

To take the main issues that come across the desk of public representatives, one will find that the people who are facing the most difficulty and stress, both in economic, mental and physical terms, are those with mortgage arrears. We get this line that the banks are dealing with individual cases under the new regulations but they are not. I can cite cases going back two or three years where we have been trying to come to an accommodation with the banks, for example, where mortgages were given out to people whose only income at the time was an invalidity pension. Such people are being communicated with by the banks once, twice and, in one case, three times a week in regard to their difficulties. They have gone through the Money Advice and Budgeting Service to try to find a resolution but no matter what agency of the State might add, subtract, multiply or divide the figures, the stark reality is that the debt they have on their shoulders is unsustainable.

There has to be a meaningful engagement with the banks to find a resolution to this issue. There are families with up to five school-going children who started out with two incomes but now only have one income. In one instance, parents with three children started out with only one income but were given a huge mortgage. That debt is still on them despite the house being in huge negative equity, but it is their home. There are also people with historical debt.

As Deputy Michael McGrath outlined earlier, only two or three mortgage-to-rent arrangements have been achieved to date. People are in treatment for mental suffering because of this issue and, in one instance, a person is currently hospitalised due to a difficulty of which I have personal knowledge. In my clinic on one particular day in the past fortnight, six individuals - grown men and women - cried in front of me in regard to the amount of debt they had on their shoulders. For any public representative, on either side of the House, to be flippant on this issue is to do a gross disservice to the Irish people because a huge number of people need help and advice.

It was wrong to introduce legislation that puts the banks in a veto position. The banks in this country and across the world had all the answers up to five years ago, they had all the experts and knew every kind of statistic available, but it was all based on a heap of sand. We in this House must be serious about our business of representing ordinary individuals who, through no fault of their own, have this huge difficulty. In many instances, it is causing illnesses and I know of one case where a person was recently diagnosed with a serious illness. The first thing that person's spouse did was to try to get the couple's bank to hold off on the mortgage payments because they were put to the pin of their collar. They were left with just €10 or €15 a week after taking care of all of their commitments and they wanted to know when they could get back to some form of normal living.

It was mentioned over last weekend that the banks will take into account certain spending, such as spending on Sky Sports and so on, but many people in this country do not currently have those services because they simply cannot afford them, given they are putting all their money together to try to ensure their financial commitments are met. It ill behoves us to have banks coming out to say they are dealing with this issue. The regulators and the Central Bank claim they are tearing out their hair in trying to get the banks to deal with these issues. In my experience of dealing with constituents, the banks are dealing with these issues by sending out letter after letter, followed by telephone call after telephone call, and by harassing people.

The simple fact is there is no blood in a stone. The sooner the banks realise this and start dealing with the issue accordingly, the better. No matter how much pressure is put on from the bank head offices and bank managers, they will not be able to get blood from a stone. There are people who cannot sustain their debt and arrangements will have to be put in place for them. This is why this Fianna Fáil motion is so important. All over the country, whether in the suburban commuter belt where house prices escalated or in rural communities, house prices have dropped. More importantly, the ability of people to earn money to pay off their debts has disappeared. If the people in charge of the banks or those regulating the banks think that sending out letters or having three communications a month to a borrower, whether by text, e-mail or otherwise, is going to make any difference, they are very mistaken. It will not make a difference.

We have to stand up on this issue. Deputy Ó Cuív mentioned the issue of fear and there are people in great fear because they want their family homes protected. Until last September or October, there was a line being given out by the banks and financial institutions that the last thing they would do is repossess the family home, but I am sorry to say that language has changed dramatically since then. While we welcome aspects of the Personal Insolvency Act, there are aspects of it with which we have serious concerns. A first point concerns the veto given to the banks but a fundamental point is that the language coming out of the financial institutions has changed the mindset of homeowners. Until September or October of last year, the suggestion was they would try to meet interest-only payments but they are now fearful their homes may be taken. The line in the Sunday newspapers was that they would be reduced to penury in order to pay back their mortgages.

We have to face up to this issue. I congratulate my colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, on putting down the motion and on the Mortgage Resolution Bill which was launched yesterday in co-operation with our colleague, Senator Thomas Byrne. We need to have an informed and passionate discussion on this issue in the debate today and tomorrow, and not play politics with it. Whether one is on this side of the House or the other side, the issue is far too serious for the people coming into our clinics who are not sleeping at night and who are reducing what they are eating to try to keep the banks or financial institutions from taking their houses. I acknowledge that some institutions such as credit unions are meeting hard-pressed borrowers but a lot more work needs to be done on this issue.

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