Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Technical Group for allowing me some of its speaking time. I also compliment Deputy Joan Collins and acknowledge her power in having the courage of her convictions and going to court in the past days and weeks. I compliment her in a special way for that and greatly appreciate and admire her for it. That should be acknowledged.

I also thank the ordinariness of this Private Members’ motion because it is concerned with common sense. As I am privileged to have some speaking time tonight I want to think of the people who bought houses at the height of the boom, who borrowed hundreds of thousands of euros, on average from €280,000 to €400,000 to build their homes. They are saddled with that debt. They are trying to raise young families, send them out to school, to keep cars going, to pay their taxes, pay for the tax, insurance and petrol for the cars, their groceries and every week to keep aside this massive sum of money to pay off the mortgage on the house that is not worth a quarter of what they paid for it.

They are fine respectable people who have only so much time on this earth. They are being denied the smallest of luxuries, ordinary things like going away for a weekend or taking their children out for an evening or for a day away somewhere and spending a couple of euro. They do not have a couple of spare euro because they are saddled with a massive mortgage. Why for God’s sake will the banks not engage in a pro-active way? If a couple is struggling to pay €1,200 a month why will the bank not tell them €500 or €600 is a more acceptable sum of money, that they can manage to pay that amount and continue to live their life, and park the rest of the debt? I am not saying that it should be written off or forgotten about but there is debt forgiveness for everybody except the people who did not create the problem in the first place. They are the fine respectable people who are keeping this country going but their lives are being made a misery because of the banks’ total inability to deal with them humanely. That is all we are asking.

The Minister of State at the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy McGinley, is a decent, respectable man who has been in this House for a long time. I admire him, and the killing thing is that he knows that what I am saying and what Deputy Mathews and others have said is the truth. He knows we are not blaggards and neither is he but the banks are blaggarding the people. Who owns the banks? The Minister of State owns them. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle owns them. Everyone here owns them The people who work in factories, the county council worker who will go out tomorrow morning with his shovel, all own our banks but our banks are not treating the people with respect. They should and the Minister of State knows that. They are a disgrace. I compliment the people in Killarney, Tralee, Ballyhea and Charleville who, week in week out, in bad weather, came out and stood up for what they believe in. If a gambler takes a punt in a bookie’s shop and loses, he throws his slip on the ground but we are paying these unsecured bondholders, these faceless, nameless people. We are paying them back and they should be burnt before our own people are burnt.

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