Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is fine. We had agreed the way it was at the Business Committee meeting; I supported whatever was going to happen.

This reform is needed. I brought it up with the Tánaiste and I got an angry response and rebuttal. It was not going to happen. The Independent Alliance has achieved this much in government, if not much else, and I salute them for that because it was badly needed. I do not like that six lay people will be appointed by another bastion of old power, the Public Appointments Service. It will pick the six members and the lay chairperson. I do not like that because they will be all retired senior public servants. What about the ordinary people?

What about what is going on in the courts at the moment with county registrars up and down the country turfing people out of their homes? These people are ill and there have been suicides and everything else given the trauma that was visited on them following the blackguarding in the banks. We know what happened when the banks were charged in court cases. There are laws for the rich but no laws for the poor. The little people have to take their medicine. County registrars need to be reformed. The Joint Committee on Finance, Public, Expenditure and Reform and Taoiseach was informed yesterday that the registrars have no powers to do what they are doing. The chairman, Deputy McGuinness, brought in people to talk to us about the new housing Bill to try to get these people off death row. They might as well be on death row as to be waiting for the sheriff. I waved a book at the Tánaiste two years ago waiting for a sheriff. People cannot live, they cannot educate their children, they cannot feed themselves and they cannot prosper or thrive, but neither can Ireland unless we have reform of all those systems. The county registrars have no powers in those areas to grant repossession orders and they need to be challenged. People cannot get the lawyers to stand up to members of Judiciary and they will not be accepted by some judges, including one appointed by the Tánaiste. I was in the court that day. He was around this House not so long ago and he would not allow a woman who came out of prison in a prison van to have a lay litigant represent her. She could not stand up or talk------

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