Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that the Minister has condemned the situation. However, the point is that there will be more incidents such as this throughout the country if we do not deal with the fact that in many cases and certainly the vast majority of those with which I have dealt the banks will not engage with people. They will not negotiate. They haunt people with letters, phone calls, emails and texts and get them to the stage where they are bullied out of their homes and hand back the keys. Five or six years later, the houses are sitting empty in the middle of a housing crisis. Many people are willing to engage and try to reach a deal, often a very reasonable deal, with the bank but the bank does not want to know about it. Nobody is holding the banks to account but a few years ago when their coffers were short they were not shy about holding out their hands for a bailout. This House has to get real and start doing something about this issue because what happened on Sunday is just the start of it. It will continue if we do not address it.

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