Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister challenges Deputies to stand up for the taxpayer. It is a pity this and the previous Government did not stand up for the taxpayer when they allowed themselves to be dragooned by the European Union into taking onto the backs of taxpayers €60 billion of bad gambling debts from the financial markets. Why did they not stand up for the taxpayer then?

Why is it always complex when it comes to the rights of the small person? Why can the Government not write down the loans for the people affected as a model of what should be done with distressed mortgages generally for those left with these unsustainable blackmail mortgages from the time of the property bubble? That is the obvious thing to do - write them down to today's values and the monthly repayments. In that way, we would sort out the problem and free up hundreds of millions of euro for the real economy.

We on the finance committee will be discussing the sale of former Irish Nationwide Building Society mortgages next week. Will the Minister release to us the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, a secret report which was commissioned and given to the Minister on this process, in which we believe different options were outlined for what could be done with these 13,000 mortgages? We need to have sight of it. Will he release it to us?

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