Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Butler for sharing her time with me. I congratulate the committee for producing this 158 page document. Like everybody else, I really welcome it. As spokesperson for children it would be remiss of me not to contribute to this debate because as we speak there are 2,000 children homeless.

I will focus on the financial side of the report which is the part I picked out. The Minister alluded earlier to the returning of the emigrants which is really welcome. They will bring back the skillset we will need to get the housing market going again. There is also the issue of Brexit. I want to talk about the role of the Central Bank in deposits and its role in the Irish League of Credit Unions. I was there the day the Irish League of Credit Unions sat before the committee. Its members told us they had an application before the Central Bank for the last number of weeks. They have €8 billion available. They do not want to give us all of it to help with the housing crisis but they are prepared to make a €1 billion, €2 billion or €3 billion available to work in partnership with local government and one of the agencies to start delivering a programme. They have a holistic approach. Their funds are coming from people within their communities and they want to put it back into the communities.

I met one of the managers of a local credit union in Ballinasloe in east Galway and his lending is capped at 10%. He cannot lend any more from the mortgage loan book whereas if that cap was raised by the Central Bank he would be able to make affordable funds available. They were talking about 3.5%. That is crucial. When we talk about affordable housing, we are not talking about the €300,000 in Dublin but rather about three or four times income multiples and keeping it within the requirements of the Central Bank. If we are looking for funding to be made available, credit unions are one of the sectors that is available and they have their hands up saying they are ready to lend. When we decide to do lending for councils and local authorities and bring the builders in, we have to look at how we will support the builders that are coming in. We cannot expect them to do all the building and pay for them at the end. There are builders and they are talking to their banks but they have concerns about how we will fund them. If we can do it in staged payments like one would do building one's own house in stages like roof and first fix and hold the 10% until the end, the builders will be able to work with the local authorities but they need to know the commitment is there. If they have that commitment from Government when they go into banks it would mean there would be a cash flow element in the process.

It is important to say, as the report does, that the Government should, "before the summer Recess and as a matter of urgency, fully and quickly implement the programme for Government’s strategy to deal with mortgage arrears". That is a vital point. It goes on to say, "Subject to advice of the Attorney General, the Government should introduce legislation for a moratorium on home repossessions until such time as the Government’s proposals are in place." Can we put a halt to the repossessions and stop adding to homeless lists until such a time as we have a plan for the delivery of the programme?

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