Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Deputies on all sides of the House have called for this basic reform over a very long period. Does Sinn Féin welcome it or not? It is a fundamental reform of how debt is dealt with.

The second thing about debt in a modern society is that it affects people at all levels of society. As we know from the crash, it is not just people on a tight budget who find it difficult to manage - lots of people do. The first thing with debt is to have easy methods of paying, so that, as far as possible, nobody ever actually gets to a court and the debt can be dealt with. In the case of water charges and Irish Water, we reformed the system and the charges in such a way that many people who are now receiving their bills are finding they have beaten the cap because they have been very careful with their use of water. That is part of the reason we have put in water metering around the country.

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