Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know you cannot.

I recently met representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation who told me they were banned from articulating concerns they have about patient care and patients under their care. That is unhealthy and the Taoiseach should be concerned about it. He should make it clear to the HSE that healthy articulation of the needs of the health service is a good thing from those who are practising and involved in it. People should not be penalised for speaking their minds on reduced services, and services that are under strain and causing difficulties for patients in many of our hospitals.

The Taoiseach read out a long reply and went through the presentation as we had it on mortgage arrears. He must realise that this is one of the central crises affecting many families. There is an alternative way. I put it to the Taoiseach that the code of conduct is wrong because it has removed protections for people in mortgage arrears. The changed legislation arising from the Dunne judgment has put the banks in the driving seat regarding people in mortgage arrears. That is essentially what has happened and people are concerned and anxious.

We need long-term sustainable mortgage solutions - split mortgages, shared equity, permanent interest rate reductions and so on. We have not been getting that to date. Despite the fact that the Cabinet sub-committee has met on four occasions on this topic, there is no sign of any framework or model of sustainable mortgage resolutions coming. It has got worse in the past two years. The numbers in arrears have doubled. The number of Cabinet meetings has not doubled but I suggest it should double in order to get some meaningful intervention by Government to ensure there is a pathway out of the crisis for people in arrears individually with knock-on consequences in the wider economy. We have lacked an imaginative and creative response to date and there is no sign of such a response coming. Regardless of whether it is right, there is a sense that the next six months will be very difficult for people in mortgage arrears. People are fearful of the number of repossessions that will arise in the next six to eight months. The Cabinet committee on mortgages needs to pull up its socks, meet more often and adopt a more interventionist response to ensure the protection of those in mortgage arrears.

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