Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Michael McGrath on bringing this Bill before the House. This is one of the most important Bills that will be debated by this House in this or any term. The Minister of State's contribution shows how detached the Government is from reality. He talks about last resorts but unfortunately many people in family homes find themselves in the last resort and are being pushed out of their homes.

This Bill addresses an issue that is causing huge hardship and stress to thousands of families around the country. A total of 33,000 mortgages on family homes are in arrears of more than two years and require a specific and measured approach if a resolution is to be found. The banks have not been treating this problem with the urgency it deserves. They have paid lip service for years to the issue while busily working themselves back into profit.

The ordinary people in this country bailed out the banks to the tune of billions of euro and suffered the austerity that followed. We all believed that part of the bailout was the resolution of the mortgage arrears on family homes with the ultimate objective of keeping families in their homes in the majority of cases. This did not happen and it is up to this Dáil now to instruct the banks to make it happen and put the structures in place to ensure that it does. That is what this Bill aims to do.

This Bill will introduce a mortgage resolution office with the power to make a mortgage resolution order that will be binding on both the lender and the bank, thereby removing the bank veto that has been shamelessly used by the banks to do nothing and maintain the status quo. I also urge at this juncture that the courts would now temporarily postpone processing court orders on family homes where the lender is making an effort to engage with the bank and give time for a mortgage resolution office to bring a long-term solution to the problem and end the need for repossessions save in the most extreme cases.

The scandal of the unregulated vulture funds that own approximately 12,000 mortgages in this country must be addressed. The stress and pressure being visited on families around the country by the representatives of these vulture funds is nothing short of a disgrace. We must send a clear message out from here today that Ireland is no longer a soft touch for these profiteers and we will protect the homeowners of this country. We reject the notion that the vultures picking over the carcass of the recession is somehow the natural order of things. It is not and it will not be tolerated.

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