Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That submission by FLAC had a very interesting quote from the programme for Government 2011-2016, which noted that "making greater use of mortgage interest supplement to support families who cannot meet their mortgage payments ... [is a] better and cheaper option than paying rent supplement after a family loses their home". The Minister has just taken away one of the supports available to some of the 180,000 people who have ended up in mortgage crisis, not all of whom would qualify for the mortgage interest supplement. Yesterday saw the publication of a report of the two thirds of local authority home loans which are in arrears, and the newspapers listed them in each county. That is the scale of it. The work is not there for people. The Minister might be correct in the logic that this was supposed to be a short-term scheme, but so is rent allowance yet she is not tackling that, but perhaps that is her plan next year. We have not seen sight of the HAP, which is the Minister's hapless scheme that she is supposedly bringing forward to address the rent allowance.

The abolition of mortgage interest supplement is contrary to the Minister's stated policy to try to work on solutions. The solutions on offer at the moment come down to the Government putting faith in the banks addressing the situation and offering solutions. Part of the solution offered by the banks is in repossession. The Central Bank set a target of 20% of offers to be made by the banks to mortgage holders in arrears of over 90 days. The banks have claimed that they have met that target, but it is only because those banks have issued 14,721 repossession letters in the last number of months, along with 2,439 requests for voluntary surrender in the same period. Clearly the banks are abusing a system which was flawed in the first place, and are not co-operating with the mortgage holders in the spirit of the mortgage arrears resolution process. I believe that the Minister is ahead of time, because we have not seen the banks engage properly in that mortgage resolution system. In the absence of proof of that, the only support that some people were able to rely on, or were hoping to rely on, was the mortgage interest supplement. The Minister last year changed the criteria to ensure that people were engaged with their banks for over a year before they would qualify, but I believe that people who engaged in the past year are now faced with the fact that the mortgage interest supplement will no longer exist by the time the 12 months are up. She held out a carrot to them and she withdrew it through this measure.

This is a retrograde step. Until there is a proper mortgage resolution process and until there is sufficient social housing in this country that people can fall back on in the event of them not being able to address their mortgage arrears, the Minister should withdraw this measure. It is a scandal that this is her response to those who are in this crisis.

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