Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty, on bringing the Bill before the House. Ordinarily, when loopholes in law are closed off it is deemed to be a good thing because the presumption is that a loophole in law is a negative and needs to be remedied or addressed. However, last July when the Government signed into law the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act, that was far from the case. As we know, the legal loophole from the judgment of Ms Justice Dunne had given, if by default, a level of protection to the family home.

Other contributors have referred to hearings in recent days in which the banks have come before the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform to report and check in with us on the targets set by the Government in respect of distressed loans and mortgage distress. As we have heard already, the four main banks have issued over 30,000 letters relating to repossessions and voluntary surrender. That is shocking, is it not? When they were before the committee previously we heard other figures that were shocking. We have now an established pattern of behaviour by the banks. It is important to state as much for the record.

The Minister of State, Deputy Donohoe, and his colleagues in government often challenge the Opposition to bring forward positive proposals. They tell us repeatedly to bring forward good ideas and maintain they will examine and consider them. Not only that, many colleagues of the Minister of State insist that they will realise them.

In simple terms, what the Minister of State has before him today is a series of good ideas. Let us go through them to clarify the position. It is a good and necessary idea to level the playing field between banks and homeowners and to make home repossession a most unattractive option and one of absolute last resort for the banks. We can all agree that is a good idea. It is a good idea to increase to six months from two months the length of time a court can adjourn a case to allow for the personal insolvency process to proceed. That is simply a matter of common sense and would represent better practice. It is a good idea to empower a judge to force parties to engage in an insolvency process and to force the banks to cover the costs. It is a good idea, in these traumatic circumstances, to insist that a process is undergone and to insist that the bank, given the disparity of wealth and power, will pick up the costs. It is a good idea to make it compulsory for courts to consider whether the lender has complied with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. It is a very good and necessary idea to put that code on a legal basis.

That, too, makes sense. It is a good idea to empower the courts to perform a reasonableness test to check out, in other words, whether the banks have really exhausted all other options and to examine and to know whether a particular bank has declined any proposal from a personal insolvency practitioner and, as I said earlier, whether the banks have complied with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. Those are all necessary checks.

In my opinion the best idea of all contained in my colleague's legislation is to ensure that before any repossession is ordered by a court, that an arrangement is in force to deal with the residual debt. That is not just a good idea but it is a great idea and it is very necessary. It is a must-do.

It is a good idea in the very traumatic event of a repossession of the family home to give a six-month period to families or nine months in the case where there are children or minors in the family, to allow families to organise their affairs. That is a matter of the most basic decency that we could legislate for. It is also a good idea and a necessary idea to ensure that vulture funds that have taken over some of the loan books should comply with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears if they are seeking a repossession.

I challenge the Minister of State and any member of the Government, notwithstanding the smart-aleck comment of the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, this morning, to identify for me which of those is not a good idea. I rather suspect that the Minister of State would recognise all of those as positives. I ask why the Government would not therefore support this legislation. I did not hear the earlier comments but I am advised that a list of all the wonders of this Government in response to the debt crisis and to mortgage distress was yet again read into the record of the House. That is fair enough if the Minister of State wishes to fly the flag and to assert what he sees as the positive progress. What we actually need is a response to the proposals contained in this legislation. People who find themselves in these awful circumstances need to have something that genuinely works. The Minister of State and I share a constituency and we have been elected from the same communities, broadly speaking. He will know as well as I know that families are deeply frustrated. Many of them are at the point of despair that any of this would be dealt with in a meaningful way. For many families it seems that it is a case of, "heads, you lose; tails, you lose". The measures introduced by the Government which were introduced, I believe, in good faith, amid a lot of fanfare, have not delivered the kind of results at the pace required. That is a bald statement of fact. My colleague, Deputy Seán Crowe, referred to public meetings that he and others from Sinn Féin had organised and attended. He spoke of the human stories that are related at those meetings. I am very sure that it is not just Opposition Deputies who are hearing those narratives; I am sure that everybody elected to this place and to the Seanad has heard similar stories. The question arises as to what we as legislators do about it. I do not think on this issue - as with many others - that a Government that simply bats things back or has a sense of holding the fort to protect its own prestige because they are the ones who govern, and would reject legislation like this - that this a good day out for Irish political life nor is it an approach that is appreciated by the citizens who elect us.

I refer to those organisations that deal daily with individuals and families faced with mortgage distress and potential repossession. I instance Ross Maguire of New Beginning who says, "This Bill gives protection to all borrowers regardless of the lender. It will mean that borrowers whose loans have been sold to vulture funds are equally protected and that is to be greatly welcomed." I refer also to David Hall, the director of the Irish Mortgage Holders Association, who calls the Bill a humane and practical approach attempting to rebalance the current imbalance that exists when banks move to repossess family homes. Those are the voices and words from those organisations in the front line who deal with these scenarios every day. Unlike us, their organisations intervene to try to give a level of resolution to families in these circumstances. They support this legislation. The big question for me is why the Government will not support it. If the Government does not support it, I ask it not to aggravate the Opposition further with the constant refrain of: "Ye never come up with anything positive and if you do, we will support it." Here is a series of great ideas and an excellent Bill, a good piece of legislation and I challenge the Minister of State and the Government to give it the support it deserves.

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