Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Considering the context of this Bill, it proves to me and most people in the country that there is one law for the billionaires and another for everybody else. At the weekend, Independent News and Media, owned by a billionaire, Mr. Denis O'Brien, had €138 million of debt written off by a consortium including Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland. If a billionaire owns a company, the banks that are owned by us or which have been bailed out by us - with the Government either having a controlling or significant stake - will write off €138 million at a stroke. In the same week, the Government wants to bring forward a Bill that will allow the wild dogs of the banks to be unleashed on distressed mortgage holders to facilitate the repossession of their homes. That is absolutely extraordinary, proving entirely the dictum that if a person owes a bank €100,000, it is that person's problem, but if a person owes €100 million, it is the bank's problem. It is a clear case of one law for the rich and another for everybody else.

Under troika pressure, this is a way to facilitate opening the floodgates of home repossession for people, with the vast majority in mortgage distress not because of anything they did but because of what the banks and developers - along with the politicians who facilitated them - have done. The Government, under the diktat of the troika, is pushing legislation that will facilitate banks hounding people with a view to getting back the homes of ordinary people, taking the roof from over people's heads. It is extraordinary.

I am sure the Minister knows of the horrendous experience of Spain, where there have been 400,000 evictions and homelessness has gone through the roof. There is a dire crisis facing ordinary working class and middle class families as they are evicted from homes. In many cases it is leading to desperate action from people facing eviction from homes. These include 53 year old Amaya Egaña, who threw herself from the window of her fourth floor apartment in the Basque country as court officials were coming up the stairs to evict her. That is just one case but we have 180,000 families out there in distress, suffering, with the vast majority doing so not because they did anything wrong.

They simply sought to put a roof over their head in a market that was rigged by the banks and the developers, with the encouragement of the politicians. It was stoked up while these innocent people sought to put a roof over their heads. They were not out to profiteer or enrich themselves, they were not out to get the obscene bonuses bankers paid themselves to sell these mortgages, they were just trying to put a roof over their heads. In some cases, the banks would tell people that if they had spare savings, they should invest them in property and borrow money to purchase an investment property for their old age or for their children. Why on earth, then, would the Minister introduce legislation to give further powers to the banks? Why would he remove an obstacle to home repossessions by the banks?

The Minister might argue that in normal times perhaps the banks should have the power to repossess, although I would not agree because I do not believe banks should have the right to repossess homes from ordinary people, particularly not in these extraordinary times of crisis created by those banks and developers. In the current situation, however, why would the Government add to the armoury of the banks? I do not understand why it would do that. Could it not at least use this as a bargaining chip and say to the banks that we would consider removing this legal loophole that acts as an obstacle to home repossessions if we see real movement on the restructuring of unsustainable mortgages for ordinary people in distress through no fault of their own? If there is real, tangible progress by the banks in this regard, writing down unsustainable debt and taking some responsibility themselves for the dire situation these tens of thousands of families are in, the Government could say it will think in a year or two about doing this. Why do it now? It is like unleashing the wild dogs and saying we have a plan to house train them. Surely some house training before they are unleashed would be a better idea, rather than opening the floodgates for them to take people's homes from them. I do not understand it.

I would like to hear an explanation from the Government. The only argument I have heard from the Minister when this point is put to him is that there are those who cannot pay but there are also those who simply will not pay. First, I do not see much evidence of that; most people I come across are making extraordinary efforts to meet their mortgage obligations when they would be better off telling the bank they cannot continue such is the level of suffering when trying to meet unsustainable mortgage repayments. That is the reality for the vast majority of people in distress but the banks do not care about that. They want their pound of flesh and the Minister is giving them more ammunition, empowering them to get that pound of flesh from people who are overwhelmingly innocent victims of a crisis created by others.

If the Minister is going to invoke moral hazard as an excuse, where is the moral hazard for billionaires like Denis O'Brien? Not only did he have €138 million of debts written off for INM this week, previously Anglo Irish Bank wrote €110 million of his debts off. That amounts to debts of €240 million being written for a company owned by one of the richest people in this country at the stroke of a pen. At the same time, the Minister wants to empower the banks to repossess the homes of people who can barely put bread on the table.

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