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

There are many reasons not to accept this Bill but I very much hope the Minister will look for the reasons and the positives to ensure he accepts it. For too long we have been focused on the bottom line of the banks and the systemic nature of the banks while ignoring the systemic nature of people. It is about the human cost to families and not just the bottom line. Some government some time is going to have to embrace that. I very much hope it is the Minister. There are no excuses for failure in this regard anymore. In the past there may have been reasons but there are no longer any excuses.

I commend my colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, on bringing forward the Bill. The Minister needs to go forward and tell the Central Bank while it is doing the review that he equally needs to put the code of conduct on mortgage arrears on a statutory footing. The reality is that the only thing that is legally binding is the moratorium - nothing else - so banks can, following the 2013 amendment to the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, cherry-pick what they want and tell customers they will do a deal for them and tell them to pay their mortgages off in the next ten years, six months or whatever suits them. They will have offered the customers something, they will claim. They will have theoretically complied with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears and then they will throw the customers under a bus anyway. This is what is really going on. Therefore, at some stage the Minister will have to put the code on a statutory footing. I ask him to check the Supreme Court overturning a High Court ruling on this to show that a moratorium is the only thing that is legally binding. This must be done.

Other Bills have passed through the House. The Mortgage Arrears Resolution (Family Home) Bill introduced by Deputy Michael McGrath in 2017 also passed Second Stage. This Bill would remove the banks' veto, putting the people central, but no, what have we done? We have done something very dishonest that subverts the spirit of democracy, with the Taoiseach taking refuge in Article 17.2 of the Constitution and not issuing money messages. A hundred Bills passed Second Stage in both Houses over the course of last year. Five were enacted and 41 sit on Committee Stage, 27 of which are being systematically blocked by the Minister's Government by its not issuing a money message. There is nothing in the Constitution to stop the Bill continuing to Committee, Report and Final Stages. I urge the Minister to tell us what the cost is and to let the House debate the matter but I ask him not to continue in a dictatorial fashion to block tangible measures to protect mortgage-holders by invoking Article 17.2 of the Constitution.

See this speech in context