Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to help protect those people from the consequences of the bad decisions and bad advice for which not one of the myriad people who ought to be accountable has ever been held to account. The recovery of this economy has been good for many industries, sectors and people but it has left a great many people behind. For these people the recovery is perhaps too late. Perhaps, they are in the wrong sector. We have allowed ourselves languish in the belief - indeed we have allowed ourselves to be deceived yet again by bankers into believing - that unresolved legacy debt was being addressed. Through the fog of public relations and spin it seems that little has been resolved. The bucket has been kicked down the road while banks have strengthened their balance sheets with public moneys and Government support. As the optics now align favourably for the banks, what are they doing?

They are selling the bucket. Notwithstanding the improvements in the insolvency process and in legislation, this bucket of unresolved legacy debt is now very much full. The debt has gone nowhere. It has been swirled around the banker's bucket. All that has changed is the owner of the bucket. The debt has not been closed off and people have not been able to get back on their feet. Now those distressed people have to start all over again and deal with the new owner of this toxic bucket except this time the owner of the bucket is foreign, alien, unregulated, mercenary and merciless.

When we listen to the people involved at the coalface dealing with debt and mortgage distress, we hear their despair at the intransigence of financial institutions that continually fail to face up to reality. People are genuinely trying to address their situation, which is clearly new and different to when they entered into their loan or mortgage contract, but the banks and other funds steadfastly refuse to deal with them or be realistic. The pip squeaking is not enough for them and the law of the land has been condoning if not encouraging this behaviour.

I have heard too many stories of people ending up in casualty wards with chest pains. I have heard too many stories of suicide and attempted suicide, often for extraordinarily small sums. It is now time for this sovereign Parliament to address the imbalance-----

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