Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being in the Chamber. With no disrespect to his good self for taking the time to be here, I wish the appropriate senior Minister were present. It is a manifestation of the Government's lack of seriousness - and indeed, going back to 2011, that of the previous Government - on this very important issue. I am quite proud to see this Bill before the House. Listening to some of the commentary from colleagues in the House other than Government representation, I believe it will pass for a Second Reading. This is vitally important.

I first got involved in this issue when I established the Prevention of Family Home Repossessions Group in March 2010 and made a submission to the now deceased Hugh Cooney's expert group on mortgage arrears. We also made proposals to the Oireachtas joint committee on finance at the time. Many of those proposals are incorporated within this Bill in a streamlined approach to give people real options and put people at the centre of State policy on the family home.

I find it reprehensible in the extreme that Government has the arrogance in its amendment to suggest that this legislation is in some way not compatible with Bunreacht na hÉireann. This is fundamentally wrong, it is flawed and I cannot imagine that this advice came from the office of any learned Attorney General. Rather, the default position when a Government does not like the idea of the Opposition bringing forward legislation that has the people central to its focus is to say it is incompatible with the Constitution of the State. Article 41 of that very same Constitution, a copy of which I have to hand, states "The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law." I put it to the Government's Attorney General, whoever is advising it or whoever is manufacturing the objection as being based on law and the Constitution to read this section of the Constitution. The protection of the family supersedes all positive law. Surely, a person's home is absolutely vital to upholding this provision of the Constitution.

Thanks to many colleagues, particularly Deputy Michael McGrath, this Bill is what in effect is our party's fourth attempt to tackle this issue. This day six years ago, 12 July 2011, I introduced the Family Home Bill in the Seanad, which, once again, the Government of the day, in the guise on that occasion of the then Minister of State, Mr. Brian Hayes, MEP, said was unconstitutional, as per the Government's amendment today. It is a pat on the back by which the Government says it likes the way we are doing things and it is good to have the opportunity to talk about these important issues. This is rhetoric in the extreme and an insult to the people of Ireland.

When we were dealing with these issues after the crash, in 2008 and 2009, the nation was consumed with the phrase "the systemic nature of our banks". This may well have been the case in the context of our economy but at what point will we acknowledge the systemic importance of our people to the nation? That is what the Government then missed and what this Government is missing today. In the Mortgage Resolution Bill 2013, dismissed-----

See this speech in context