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

I commend Deputy Joan Collins for the considerable work she and her team have put into this Bill. It is often stated by the Government, in a rather unfair and somewhat disingenuous way, that this side of the House is good at criticising but does not put forward alternatives. That is untrue. On many issues, we have put forward alternatives. It is clear from this Bill that considerable effort has gone into producing a well researched and well thought-out alternative and I hope the Government will seriously engage with the suggestions being made. As has been underlined, Deputy Joan Collins did not pull this out of her hat. She has researched it and looked at a comparable experience in Norway and a solution that worked there. The Government at least has a responsibility to engage seriously with this and even if it does not agree with its every aspect, it should let this proceed to the next Stage so we can seriously debate an issue on which the Government cannot claim it has a monopoly of wisdom. The Minister, Deputy Shatter, may say the insolvency legislation will work but it is clear, after five years of this unprecedented crisis of mortgage distress, that the crisis is still with us and we need to look again at how we deal with it.

We need to be open, if we are serious and if we are being honest about dealing with this crisis that affects 180,000 families - 140,000 who are in distress and 40,000 who have been in restructuring arrangements - and tens of thousands more who are just about making their mortgage payments but are screwed to the wall in the process. If the latter group are victims of further austerity measures, such as stealth taxes and social welfare cuts, in the forthcoming budget in October, they could find themselves going into arrears, as has happened following all of the recent budgets. There is no more serious crisis than this, and if the Government is honest and fair, even notwithstanding disagreements with this side of the House of an ideological or other nature, and if it is open to a serious discussion about dealing with this most serious of crises, it will take this Bill seriously and will allow it proceed for further discussion at the next Stage.

We are talking about a crisis of human suffering for all those families, of anxiety and, in extreme cases, of borrowers taking their own lives. We are talking about a crisis that is having an extraordinarily damaging effect on the economy and its ability to recover. We are talking about a crisis that is all the more galling and enraging, both for those who are its victims and for those who are looking on at it, because it is one where those who are at the sharp end of it have not been bailed out and are not being protected, but those who were responsible for it have been bailed out to the tune of tens of billions of euro and are protected at every hand's turn. The bondholders are protected. The executives who made the decisions who are still on astronomical salaries and expenses are protected while tens of thousands of ordinary families are suffering the threat of the loss of their home, are unable to pay their bills and are having to make stark choices between putting the food on the table and paying off their mortgage at the end of the month.

As was clear to all across the political spectrum at the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform when all of those banks came in, the banks' only agenda is their balance sheets. In the case of the bank least under State influence because the State is only a minority shareholder, frankly, it showed a contemptuous attitude towards the pleas of the Government and the public for write-down, fairness etc. They just did not give a hoot. They only care about their balance sheet and shareholders. Some of the nationalised banks sound a little different but, in reality, are behaving in the same way.

Of course, these bailed out banks which the State funded are giving write-downs to some borrowers. They are absorbing the funding that we provided to bail out ordinary householders to give write-offs to the corporate debtors. There is one extraordinary example to which I never got an answer and which I raised on three or four occasions here. How is it that Anglo Irish Bank wrote off €110 million worth of debt for the company Sierra, owned now by Mr. Denis O'Brien, which has got the contract for water meters? It can get €110 million written off but for those who are struggling to keep a roof over their head, the banks, we were told blankly by them at the aforementioned committee, do not do write downs. However, they do it for some, and this is allowed. The schizophrenia of the banks is extraordinary.

I still heard them trotting out the line at the committee that they lent the money in good faith, it is money that is owed and they have the right to get it back, as if those banks somehow were separate entities from the ones that were lending hundreds of millions of euro to the profit-driven developers who pumped up the market in the first place and forced customers into a situation of borrowing far too much just because they wanted to put a roof over their head. The banks pretend these two activities were somehow separate from one another.

Simply, we ask the House to shift the balance. As Deputy Joan Collins has said, some of us would go much further in how we would deal with this but this is a modest proposal to shift the balance, to force the banks to take some hit and to ensure the protection of the borrower's family home.

I put it to the Minister, Deputy Shatter, that it is a test for the Government as to whether it is listening to the people and the Opposition and willing to have a debate. We are willing to have a debate with the Government. We accept this raises questions, such as about how this can be paid for, but the Minister should not bat us off with soundbites. He should have a discussion with us about whether it is possible for the banks to give some write-down in a way that makes borrowers' mortgages sustainable and protects their homes. Let us discuss the detail of that and whether it can be done. I appeal to the Minister not to dismiss the Bill and vote it down because it was not his idea.

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