Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Every time I hear the expression, "the tracker mortgage scandal", I cannot help thinking of the advertisement that was used to get people to buy into tracker mortgages. There are a dozen people sitting on an Imp bus going through the city of Dublin saying to each other out loud, "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is." It turns out the bankers did not seem to know what a tracker mortgage is either. However, we are in a situation where nobody can access justice against the banks for what they did to tens of thousands of people.

The main purpose of the Bill is to deal with that situation so we very much welcome it. It will benefit others who find themselves at odds with an arcane legal system that insists that even when a case affects dozens or hundreds of people, individuals must take cases separately. As Deputy Barry said, it is quite alarming that we have gone through this many decades of a so-called modern state and we do not already have that facility in law. Any bias against ordinary people taking cases, for example, against wealthy corporations, would be addressed by the Bill. Ordinary people generally do not have the ability to spend the hundreds of thousands of euro that is required to pay lawyers in this archaic legal system. This type of legislation might make it more possible for them. It will not rock the Casbah; it exists in America, but so does injustice at a high level and great scale. It will give people more access to a level playing field. There are many cases that we have seen in the United States in which people have won class actions, particularly on environmental issues, such as the community living in Love Canal. We welcome this attempt to reform a court system that was very much condemned by ourselves and others in this House earlier in the year when Deputy Jim O'Callaghan introduced a Bill which would reform the Judiciary. It will open the secret worlds of the Kings Inns and the Law Society to a certain degree. I hope it will make it financially possible for ordinary citizens to access some kind of justice in a system that continues to fail them, not only against corporations and banks but also against the State.

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There are other scandals involving homes being built with pyrite and without basic fire safety measures, institutional abuse of women and children and the degradation of local communities by abuse of the environment. In that regard, I mention the communities in west Dublin where I live that put up with considerable interference from environmental companies which are so-called clean and friendly but which actually impose considerable degradation, trouble and hassle with implications for the community. Perhaps the Bill might open the way for such communities to take cases against them.

There is also the case of Volkswagen's falsification of emissions and the resulting data breach. Throughout the world people are taking actions against corporations over coal, oil, gas, etc. because environmental destruction and interference are huge issues and related to the big question of climate change. For all of these reasons, we welcome the Bill which I do not think is a revolutionary measure. If we could get justice for communities and individuals across the globe by such measures, that would be the way forward. Unfortunately, even where there are those measures, gross injustices continue to be imposed on communities and individuals. If the Bill was to allow a little more light into the judicial system and balance the scales slightly in favour of communities and ordinary people, we absolutely welcome it and will work with others to see it through.

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