Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is a little disappointing that the Government has refused to accept what is a modest proposal by Deputy Collins. I commend her on putting forward this motion and on consistently raising the issues of mortgage distress and the need to deal fairly with people who find themselves in this extremely difficult situation.

The proposals Deputy Collins has put forward are nothing more than the proposals agreed by an all-party committee that examined these issues, including members of the Government parties. Therefore, I do not see why the Government has moved an amendment to the motion. There seems to be widespread acceptance that there is no consistency whatsoever in terms of the banks and mortgage lenders to deal with the problems of mortgage arrears and that we need to improve the situation considerably to bring fairness, certainty and assurance to the many tens of thousands of families who find themselves in extreme difficulty now, some six years after this crisis hit.

One can bandy about statistics on the number of mortgages that are less than 90 days in arrears and the banks meeting targets and so forth, but all of that masks the human reality that 130,000 families have been living a nightmare for six years. For many of them, there is no end to that nightmare. That is a very debilitating, unfair situation to put families and children through - living in a constant state of anxiety and insecurity about the roof over their heads. The Government has failed to deal decisively with that, despite the fact that an all-party committee of the Oireachtas has stated that it should do precisely what is proposed in this motion.

It is worth pointing out that I, Deputy Joan Collins, and many other Members would go a great deal further than what is proposed in the motion. We have said from the beginning that Ireland should have adopted the Norwegian model and simply forced the banks to agree deals with distressed mortgage holders which would ensure that they kept the roofs over their heads. The Government has resisted that. Instead, it has put in place some rules and regulations, but to a large extent it has left the ultimate decisions in the hands of private banks. The banks are commercially driven and interested in profit. They are not particularly interested in the distress in which mortgage holders find themselves.

It is worth noting the contrast between a bank that is fully owned by the State and other banks that are privatised or close to being privatised, after we bailed them out. The State-owned bank at least has brought in a third party in the form of the Irish Mortgage Holders' Organisation, which has been campaigning consistently for fairness and consistency in how we deal with distressed mortgage holders and is showing itself capable of getting results. It raises the question of why other banks, such as Bank of Ireland, which we also bailed out, are allowed to behave in whatever way they wish. As they consider their first responsibility to be their shareholders and making money for those shareholders, they are far less interested in the fate and plight of people who have distressed mortgages. It is against that background that the Government is being asked to be fair.

I wish to make a final point. The other side of this coin is the spiralling social housing lists, the bill for which is being picked up by the taxpayer. They are spiralling out of control and to a large extent this is being caused by banks forcing tenants out as receivers move in and the banks repossessing people's homes, as a result of which people go on social housing lists. It was confirmed last week that the social housing list in Dún Laoghaire has increased from 4,000 to over 5,000 in just one year. I have not seen the national figures yet, but if that increase is replicated around the country, we are facing a social housing crisis that is spiralling out of control.

We have not dealt in a proper way with the issue of providing housing for people as a right and ensuring that banks treat people fairly. If the State is not going to step up to the mark in terms of forcing the banks to behave properly, it should at least build social and affordable housing to ensure that people will have somewhere to go when they are turfed out by the banks. Indeed, it is this and previous Governments' privatisation of the housing market that has left us in this sorry state in the first place.

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