Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Of course, I acknowledge there have been changes to deal with a number of areas of the legislation in regard to people in difficulties. There has been a suite of legislation, as I said, which includes the introduction of new personal insolvency arrangements to allow for work on this. There was a court case on which the Government acted as a result of the earlier court decisions in regard to some repossessions, and that clearly had to be acted upon.

What we are aiming to achieve in this area is to give people the maximum opportunity to stay in their homes while working out arrangements with the banking system. The Central Bank, as the Deputy knows, is overseeing that process. There is significant progress on that and, indeed, we read in the newspapers this week evidence of the way in which banks are dealing in a more creative way with people in genuine difficulty.

Clearly, every case has to be dealt with on its individual merits. There is not the opportunity, as the Deputy would like, for someone to say that every case must be dealt with exactly in this way, that is, by writing down the value to the market value. Such options are not available to us because the cost of such on the taxpayer would be so enormous.

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