Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach's intervention in the house repossession crisis. The number of court proceedings for house repossessions is rising at an alarming rate. In 2014 approximately 10,000 new applications for repossession were made to the courts. Between 1 and 10 January 2015, more than 1,400 court applications were made. According to all of the indications, there will an avalanche of similar cases in the coming period. It is speculated by reliable sources that up to 30,000 repossessions will be carried out between now and 2016. This is ironic, given that we are approaching the centenary of the 1916 Rising because the Proclamation of Independence stated all of the children of the nation would be treated as equals.

This is certainly not in keeping with that aspiration. In court proceedings so far, an alarming 46% of cases have resulted in an order for the repossession or sale of a property. In the Munster counties alone, there were 676 court proceedings in being in January. In my own county, there were 84 cases while there were 115 in the Taoiseach's county, Mayo. These figures have been compiled from the registrars of courts and the legal diary. The figures for people who have been in arrears for two years or more is consistently high. The latest statistic is that more than 37,500 people are in this category. The figures I am relating for our counties are mirrored across the board and consistently in proportion to population size. With a huge population in County Cork, there are 174 repossession proceedings in being.

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