Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this extremely important issue which affects tens of thousands of people across the length and breadth of this country. I raised this issue as a Topical Issue before Christmas. The Minister who was taking the debate said I was scare-mongering, that the issue was not so serious. We now know its seriousness because each of us meet constituents every day in our clinics who tell us about the special court sittings every month in Mullingar, Athlone and Longford, for example. On average, 40 to 50 cases of family home repossessions are being presented to the court. This is not scare-mongering.

These are the hard, cold facts of what is happening at the moment. Two weeks go, we had the pitiful situation where the Taoiseach, in reply to a question from my party leader, said he was "not happy" with the banks ignoring the recommendations of personal insolvency practitioners for dealing with distressed mortgages. He was hopeful, he said, the PIPs and the banks were listening to him when he brought in their representatives and articulated his concerns. Where is the leadership there? It is greatly missing. Where is the hope for the thousands of affected families looking on? Where can they find evidence the Government is taking this issue by the scruff of the neck?

The reality is that the banks are still calling the shots and the personal insolvency legislation that was initiated more than two years ago by the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, is not working. When the former Minister brought that legislation before the Dáil, he predicted that 21,000 applications would be dealt with in the first year. As we know, at the end of 2014, just a handful of cases were dealt with and only a fraction of them related to family cases. This is happening at a time when 118,000 families are in arrears, 60,000 of them for more than one year and 37,000 for more than two years. In my own constituency, almost 20% of mortgages in Longford are in arrears, while the figure for Westmeath is 15%. That is confirmation that the system introduced by the Government to help these families is failing. It is proof that the banks' veto is intolerable and must be changed. We advised against including that veto in the Bill when it was published.

We are not the only ones making these points. Members of the Minister of State's party are saying the same. This week we heard on "Morning Ireland" that a number of Government backbenchers are bringing forward legislation in recognition that the Government's system is not working. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the courage of those Government backbenchers in producing legislation to address the problem. I ask the Government to do the same by, at a very minimum, affording the Deputy in whose name the Bill will be tabled the opportunity to bring it to the floor of the House. That Deputy should have the chance to present his proposal that the period of bankruptcy be reduced from three years to one year. Let us have the opportunity to debate that proposal. In indicating his intention to bring forward legislative proposals, this particular Deputy referred to what he called the "shocking statistics" relating to the lack of help available to people with mortgage arrears. That is why he is bringing forward his proposal, in order to give ordinary Joes a hand. I ask the Minister of State and his colleagues not to do to that legislation what they did to the Bill the same Deputy introduced concerning the erection of wind farms. The latter proposal was allowed to be brought forward in the House but has been gathering dust on a shelf somewhere ever since.

People might argue that some of the problems we are facing today are a consequence of decisions made and policies initiated by previous Governments. That is true in some cases. There was an over-reliance on incentives for property investment, but two wrongs do not make a right. This Government has been in office for four years and it is high time something is done to support struggling families. Since 2011, the number of people in arrears for more than 90 days has doubled. The banks, once again, retain control. Bankruptcy is an option for some of the investors, entrepreneurs and risk takers in our society who have created employment down through the years. Those people must be supported to be in a position to create more employment. However, for the purposes of the Bill before us today, we are talking about ordinary family homes. The vast majority of people in mortgage difficulty who come through the door of my clinic, as is surely replicated throughout the country, want to retain home ownership. Their home is their castle and they want to keep it. A couple came to me recently who had borrowed €135,000 to buy an apartment, which reflected the value of the property at the time. Today, it is valued at €50,000. This couple are making a repayment every month, but the bank wants them to sign up to an agreement to pay €1,000 per month for 30 years. For an original loan of €135,000, they are being asked to repay €360,000 and they were told to take it or leave it. There is nothing to bind the banks to be reasonable or practical in their dealings with people in that situation. Dealing with this issue is necessary as a social good. It makes good social sense as well as good financial sense to ensure people can remain in their family homes.

The reason the banks are ramping up their efforts is that house prices are increasing. They have only one focus, namely, to return to profitability and to hell with the consequences. The Government, unfortunately, is stuck in the mud and seems to consider it acceptable that the banks should direct and dictate the pace. Why does the Government not accept this legislation? Members opposite are forever saying there is nothing positive coming from this side of the House. Here is a positive proposal which will ensure that where home owners can come forward with a real, sustainable and practical solution, which is independently evaluated, it is binding on the banks to accept it. In such circumstances, the banks could look at such options as splitting mortgages, implementing a debt for equity arrangement or reducing the repayment capacity. This would ensure people who have the wherewithal to put forward a sustainable solution are accommodated.

I acknowledge that in some instances, no sustainable solution will be available. Where that is the case, the mortgage to rent scheme should come into play. This was another scheme the Government claimed would keep people in the family home. Fewer than 100 home owners have qualified for that scheme in two years. I am attending a meeting with their bank next week of a couple who have no hope of repaying the mortgage they took out. They bought out their local authority home and owe some €200,000 on it. Both are in their late 50s and their only income is social welfare. Their application to avail of the mortgage to rent scheme was rejected because there are only two of them living in a three-bedroom house. The bank is telling them they cannot stay in their home, but it will ask the local authority to provide them with a two-bedroom house. That is terribly unjust. We must ensure the mortgage to rent scheme is available to people who cannot come forward with a sustainable solution.

The time for procrastinating over this issue is long gone. The time for platitudes and bringing forward proposals without any follow-through is past. The time for being hopeful, as the Taoiseach described himself some weeks ago, is over and finished. It is time now for action. It behoves all of us, across all parties and none, to bring forward legislation that will ensure, at a very minimum, after all that people have gone through, including wage reductions, job loss and so on, that they can hold on to their family home and have a roof over their heads. If we can agree on nothing else in this Dáil, we should agree on that and put all supports in place to ensure it happens.

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