Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start by thanking Deputy Michael McGrath for bringing this Bill, which I hope passes, forward. The Government has said it would not oppose it anyway. The Minister is probably aware, and I hope he is, of the distress caused by continuous announcements by various banks that they are selling parts of their mortgage portfolios to the vulture funds. That is causing huge stress to homeowners, who for a variety of reasons, find themselves in mortgage distress. We do not need to be here. People should not be going through this. The Minister and previous Governments have failed to act decisively on this issue.

In 2015, Fine Gael and the Labour Party failed to put the proper regulation of vultures in place. Their legislation only regulated the middleman. In 2016, as part of an all-party Dáil Committee on Housing and Homelessness, Sinn Féin proposed a number of solutions that could have been enacted quickly to help those in mortgage distress. The Government ignored many of these. The Government failed to legislate to cap mortgage interest rates, legislation that could be designed to lapse at some point in the future if a healthy market emerges. The Government also failed to amend the personal insolvency system to end the banks' veto in cases where the family home is involved, regardless of when the arrears began. It failed to significantly improve the mortgage-to-rent scheme to make it a more attractive option for both lenders and housing bodies, and failed to apply greater pressure on the banks to meet ambitious targets. Any mortgage-to-rent scheme must be accessible and designed to help struggling homeowners. These proposals were also not accepted. Sinn Féin attempted to make sure that the owner, that is, the vulture, would be fully regulated, but our amendment was voted down at committee in May 2015 by Fine Gael and the Labour Party, with Fianna Fáil not present for the vote.

In 2017, Sinn Féin tabled legislation, the Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) (Amendment) Bill 2017. It is now desperately needed to protect the homeowners affected by sales to vultures by fully regulating the actual owner of the credit. The Central Bank has called for this course of action. Obviously, Sinn Féin's ideas will only be accepted as a last resort by this Government, which thinks it has all the answers. However, the most recent homelessness figures clearly demonstrate that the Rebuilding Ireland programme is not working. The Government's housing policies are failing.

Sinn Féin supports this Bill as it is similar to one Deputy Pearse Doherty has tabled and to our amendments when the original Bill was before the Oireachtas. However, regulation by itself will be of limited benefit to homeowners. Vultures operate on a short-term basis, while mortgages are long-term products. The Minister recently announced a review of the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. Our demand is that restructuring options in the code, such as split mortgages and mortgages-to-rent, should be made mandatory and not just voluntary. This would mean that the bank or vulture, when regulated, would have to offer one or both of these measures before any repossessions. This would be a solution. Will the Minister do this? I call on him to stop prevaricating and take action. Deputy McGuinness spoke the truth when he said that vulture funds are bullies and thugs. That is the experience I have had when speaking to families in my constituency office who have been dealing with them.

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