Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is clear that the Government does not like this Bill. The Minister has given one excuse after another to leave things as they are. I take a different approach. I also took a different approach from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on the Anti-Evictions Bill, which both parties suggested was constitutionally flawed. I believe it should proceed to Committee Stage where we can thrash those things out. The Bill should be allowed to pass because of the numbers recited in the House by the Minister and by Deputy Michael McGrath, the Bill's sponsor, whom I commend on bring the legislation to the floor of the House.

We are talking about close to 80,000 individuals, many of whom have been in arrears for a long time. That we are debating tens of thousands of Irish citizens who are in long-term mortgage arrears nearly a decade after the crash is a clear reflection of the Government's inaction. Deputy Michael McGrath referred to previous attempts by him and others to bring issues to the floor of the House to try to address this problem. In 2013, I drafted legislation that would have provided greater protection in law to the family home. Unfortunately at that time, the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government decided to vote against it.

We need new thinking and a new approach from Government. I have long advocated for an independent office that would be able to impose decisions over the heads of the banks. That is exactly what Deputy Michael McGrath has proposed - a new process within the insolvency service, a mortgage resolution office that would be empowered to put in place a mortgage resolution order designed to protect the family home in the insolvency process.

As has been mentioned, a number of existing solutions could be offered based on such an order being made, including debt write-down, debt for equity, mortgage to rent and a number of others. The Government is clearly and predictably setting its face against it. It is about inaction as opposed to action. We should deal with this on Committee Stage. I have issues with the Bill. I do not want to waste my time discussing something that is unconstitutional but let us get the advice from the counsel here in the office. Let us hear from legal experts. Let us carry out the pre-legislative scrutiny on this. If need be, let us tweak it, amend it and reshape it in order that we have legislation that will give protection to those families currently facing the weight of the financial institutions that are trying to repossess their house by voluntary or involuntary action.

What we have from Government is more and more promises. The programme for Government promised to set up a special court to deal with mortgages. Last week I got a response to a freedom of information request. After a year and a half, there is not one piece of paper briefing the Minister on a special court to deal with mortgages, a key promise in the programme for Government. There is no action on that and it will quietly be let go. Based on the Minister for Finance's recently published brief, the Central Bank has not backed the plan to amend the code of conduct in order that lenders would have to offer more solutions. Even the ideas that the Government came up with, which were done when it was under pressure trying to cobble together a minority Government, are being knocked back.

What we have is same-as, plan A, the way it is. The Government wants to leave it to the markets, leave it to the financial institutions and leave it to the vultures, which the former Minister for Finance believed played a very important part in the system. Who are the prey of these vultures? It is the 80,000 families who are in mortgage arrears. They deserve to be front and centre in this political debate. It is an issue that has not gone away and is not going away. It needs action.

On behalf of Sinn Féin, I thank Deputy Michael McGrath for bringing this very important issue to the floor of the House again. I pledge our support for it to go to pre-legislative scrutiny at which point we can start to take the politics out of it and start to do what is in the best interests of families and homeowners who are suffering the brunt of the financial institutions which want to take the rug from under them.

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