Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Bond yields are of no interest to the people who are fighting to save their houses. The problem lies in the Taoiseach's answer. He stated that recapitalisation of arrears and term extensions account for 60% of the offers made to date. Recapitalisation of arrears and term extensions are not sustainable for people who have too much debt. Both of those so-called solutions increase the total payments made over the lifetime of a mortgage. He asked what does he do besides creating jobs. It is great that the jobs figure is rising. I will tell him what this Government needs to do for people who are in mortgage arrears. It needs to focus not just on the quantity of offers made but also on the quality of those offers and the consistency of offers across lenders. Last week the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform met representatives of organisations supporting mortgage holders. These are the people who are on the ground helping mortgage holders. They stated that providing figures for targets approved is counterproductive because the focus is on the target and, therefore, not on the individual. Representatives made the following observations:

Over 3,000 people contacted FLAC last year through our centres and telephone lines in utter frustration at the lack of professionalism in the way they were being dealt with...

The helpline has handled 11,000 calls since its establishment. Of those calls, approximately one half was made after the people had already received a final offer from their lender and two thirds of those were sale or repossession. That was the only offer on the table...

We have a crazy situation, whereby it is alleged that repossessions take place only as a last resort but there is no front-end supervision or monitoring and no rules to ensure that is the case... It is like the Gaza Strip. Individual lenders can do anything... The Central Bank confirmed to us in July that it does not have the power to compel lenders to offer specific products... The only language that these guys understand is legislation. The only thing that is going to work is firm, strict, unambiguous and crystal clear legislation.

In light of the overwhelming evidence for the benefits of a sustainable set of mandated solutions for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of men and women in terms of ensuring consistency, quality and fairness, will the Taoiseach consider introducing legislation that mandates a single set of solutions for mortgage holders?

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