Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I offer my condolences to Deputy Pearse Doherty, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and the other Deputies from Donegal on the tragic loss of four young people over the weekend.

I will support this Bill. It is a good Bill. I do not understand why we would not want to do something about an element of the code of practice that would basically give it a bit of power. I listened to the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, and, my God, I do not know what has happened in two years. Perhaps Ministers of State are reeled out, the senior civil servants hand them a page and they must read out whatever BS is on it. He is absolutely not the same person I knew two years ago, when we sat in front of the Minister at a table. I spent about 80 days up and down the road for all the good it did me. The first thing that was agreed with the officials of the Minister at the time, Deputy Noonan, was that before any bank could go to the courts about someone in a distressed mortgage, a split mortgage or mortgage-to-rent would have to be offered in the first two days. Have we seen this since? Absolutely not. I hope we are not wasting our night here and that the Government does not do its usual trick with a money order and send it to their good buddies whom they were with over in Davos and all these other places over the past week or two, and their buddies in Brussels who want to bring in other legislation to ensure that all loans that banks have can be sold on to vulture funds.

The former Minister, Deputy Noonan, put it on the record, and there is no doubt about it from what we have heard tonight from the Minister and the Taoiseach, that they are lovers of vulture funds. That is a sad thing. I heard what came out in the report tonight, and I do not think the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, believes the stuff he read out, that vultures are better. Let us be very clear. If a bank sells on a mortgage, a vulture will not offer the borrower a split mortgage. That is the bottom line. Let no one cod themselves. They look for a demand of money. Yes, a borrower who has one house and who is willing to get the hell out of it will probably get a write-down if the loan is bigger than the house is worth. This option is not very freely available to people with young families. This is what we are saying to the people. There does not seem to be any sympathy at all or any attempt to do anything about this.

Let me be very clear on this. A Bill was tabled here by Deputy McGuinness. I supported it, as did Deputy Mattie McGrath in front of me. Edmund Honohan put it together. It is sad to say that in the case someone who checks paperwork and who tries to ensure a level playing field, which is all any of us is looking for, is made sure he will not handle cases again for whatever reason. This is a person in whom many people would have put faith and who has given a bit of fair play to everyone on both sides of this argument. This does not just go one way. What happened over the weekend was disgusting. I am just flabbergasted that the Government will not support this Bill. We need even stronger legislation. This is for people to stay in their family home.

Fr. McVerry told us a week ago that there are 12,000 buy-to-lets. Even if one is not worried, as the Government is not, about the people who own the houses, what about the people living in them, which would be 24,000 or 30,000 people? We know about the current homelessness situation. Are we more worried about what Goldman Sachs made? I saw today what it made as a vulture. Are we lovers of Promontoria? Are we lovers of all these vulture funds around the world? Do we play the good kids of Europe to ensure we will get our loan books down and say, "Yes, sir"? This scaremongering is used then that interest rates will have to be higher and all these other different scenarios. There is always a solution for a bank. If it sells a loan to Promontoria, Goldman Sachs or whoever else, it can always say to the borrower, if he or she does want to get rid of it, that it will give him or her a 40% or 50% write-down. Their options are always there. Is it wrong to say to borrowers on the first day they go in that they must sign their name to the loan to the effect that they have done a deal with whichever bank they have done it with? Then the bank can decide to sell something on. We need a little realisation in this country. If I buy something, I will not be selling it down the road again. I take the risk on it. Banks have been bailed out in this country to the tune of €65 billion. There was scaremongering as to what credit unions would or would not do. They did not get near the money. They only used a few million.

We seem to have this psyche that whatever the ECB, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance say goes, that the banking sector must be left tax free and make plenty of money, that anything that looks dodgy will be sold on to someone else outside of this country, and that our country must be owned by foreigners. We are more concerned about this than looking after men, women and children in our own country. What is going on is deplorable. I am not a conspiracist but I believe that what I saw happen to Edmund Honohan over the weekend represents a stacking of the odds against the ordinary person.

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