Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mattie McGrath for sharing time and allowing me to speak.

The word "eviction" sends a shiver down the spine of every Irish person given what went on in history. Sadly today the Government is allowing it to happen every day. I sat in on the discussions over the programme for Government and for six days in a row we talked about ways to solve this problem through the courts. I looked at the legislative proposals for the period from now to the summer. There is not one thing relating to putting stuff into the courts. It is like the substitute on the football team. The Government has it down at the bottom of the ladder, as it were. It does not give a damn if people are thrown out of their houses.

Until we face up to the reality that the banks have to give either a split mortgage or mortgage to rent, we will never solve it. Some 50,000 people will lose their houses this year if it continues as it is going and it will compound what Deputy Coppinger has said. While the Government will not admit it, it does not want to pay the rent allowance to those people who will be thrown out of their houses. It is about time we woke up and put the legislation into the courts to ensure people will not be evicted from their property.

As Deputy Mattie McGrath said, we have read today that the vultures have landed on farmers now. Throughout the country farmers who might have missed a payment are in trepidation because somebody new will have taken over their loans. Farmers struggled enough in recent years while the Minister, Deputy Coveney, was Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. It is about time we did something for them to ensure that innocent women and their husbands and children are not, so to speak, being pegged out of their houses left, right and centre. Michael Davitt, who set up the Land League, died in 1906. In 2017, I am sad to say, after six years of Fine Gael in Government, people might have to get together again to fight for the battle of the land and fight for the rights of Irish people instead of American vultures taking over the country.

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