Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Someone is misleading someone here, because all the small businesses that have contacted us about this in recent months, which are in discussion with bankers themselves, will tell us that the cost of funds is 2%. We then find officially that the blended cost of funds at Permanent TSB is 1.74%. At Bank of Ireland the cost of funds was 1.15% in June 2014. At AIB it was 1.64%. We know that it has come down substantially since 30 June 2014. The banks are high on the hog again and they are fattening themselves up nicely. We have to be strong in determining that at this stage they have an obligation to assist the many variable rate mortgage holders who are under great pressure. We should not ask families to subsidise other families because they entered into tracker mortgage contracts with banks. For all these reasons, I urge the Minister to act quickly.

There is no doubt that the Insolvency Service of Ireland is not functioning as intended, as has been referred to by Deputy Collins. This is happening day in, day out in courts throughout the country, where banks are seeking repossessions. It is not working. If it were, we would not have this level of repossessions presenting to the courts in the first place and there would be greater knowledge of the many people whose homes are being taken off them. One would have assumed they would at least have been aware of the Insolvency Service of Ireland, but we find time and again that families who are under great stress and are losing their homes are not aware of the mechanism that was set up by the Government to address this issue. This is an indication of failure of policy. The insolvency service had better pick up its game a bit and make itself more visible to hard-pressed families.

On numerous occasions, we, and Deputy McGrath, have raised the issue of the bank veto. This Government is beholden to the banks, giving the bank all the cards.

See this speech in context