Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Bill before the House would keep families in their homes, remove the bank veto and create an independent mortgage resolution office. It would also create balance for the first time between lenders and borrowers. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the huge work done by Deputy Michael McGrath on this Bill and to recognise the support from right across the Opposition benches for it.

Some version of this Bill should have been put in place by the Fine Gael-Labour Government years ago. I have raised that matter several times. Deputy Michael McGrath raised it several times. Deputy Pearse Doherty raised it several times. This has been raised again and again and again. Every time it has been raised, Fine Gael has put up the same defence, namely, that we cannot do this because we have to protect the private property rights of the banks.

When the Government put its hands into people's private pension funds, what of the private property rights of the owners of those pension funds? When the Government levied taxes upon taxes on people to recapitalise the banks, to pay the debts of the banks, what about the private property rights of the citizens then? When the Government took the mortgages of homes of tens of thousands of Irish families and sold them to vulture funds from America that were not even paying any bloody taxes on their profits, what of the private property rights of those families? When it came to the State bailing out the banks and paying down their debts, there was no talk of private property rights. When it came to delving into private pension funds there was no talk of private property rights. When it came to selling Irish families down the river to foreign vulture funds there was no talk of private property rights. God forbid that a piece of legislation would be introduced in this country that gave some rights to borrowers. Suddenly, such a piece of legislation is against the Constitution. We were unable to do anything for the past ten years because of the private property rights of the banks. What is happening is outrageous and it must be stopped.

The other spurious position put forward is that this would damage new lending. As anyone involved in financial services knows, however, one of the things holding up lending is these legacy debts of the banks. One of the things that is stopping that being cleared up is a decent process with balanced powers between borrowers and lenders. In his rebuttal of the Bill, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, cited the Personal Insolvency Act 2012. Fine Gael-Labour amended the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 in 2015. Section 115(A) of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 gives the courts today, under limited circumstances, the power to take away the bank veto, yet when it is proposed by Fianna Fáil, suddenly it cannot be done because it is repugnant to the Constitution. Ten years after the mortgage crisis - every Deputy in this House has been dealing with individuals and families trying to hang on by their fingernails in the intervening period - it beggars belief that the Government maintains the line that it cannot remove the bank veto because of the private property rights of the banks.

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