David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister said the people sitting opposite him did not have a monopoly of understanding the fears and anxieties of those with distressed mortgages or who found it difficult to pay very high mortgages. That may or may not be correct, but I do not believe the Government understands fully what is happening to the families concerns and their real fears and anxieties when vulture funds arrive on the scene. To understand them we must go back and understand the journey the people concerned went on and what happened to them. By and large, they are families who worked hard and bought homes before the economic crash. I will give the example of two working people who wanted to own their own home, were not looking for anything from the State, the Government or anybody else and bought a house. Most of those involved bought their house at the top end of the market before the crash. When the crash came, it was not their fault and the bottom fell out of the economy. The banks were exposed for their bad practices and went bust. What happened then? The State saved the banks; the National Pension Reserve Fund was cleaned out; we borrowed money from the troika and took taxpayers' money and put it into the banks that had acted so irresponsibly. The very same families who had bought their house at the top end of the market are the ones who are paying the price.

We found ourselves exposed with no money to invest in the economy. What did Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do? What did the Green Party and the Labour Party do when they were in government supporting these parties? They took an axe to public services and cut welfare and social supports. People lost their jobs causing huge distress and anxiety for families. People had to leave the country. Families made sacrifices at the time, but they stuck it out and tried their best. There was a pick-up in the economy and perhaps one or both persons in a household with a mortgage found a job. They then entered into a long-term arrangement with a bank they trusted and with which they had taken out the mortgage. it was a bank they, their families and communities owned. Peoples' taxes, blood, sweat and tears went into supporting the banks, through no fault of their own. They trusted them. Families who were struggling, thought everything was okay and worried that a letter could be a bill that they might not have been able to afford received letters from the banks they owned stating their mortgages were being sold to a vulture fund. They have no way to stop this from happening as they have no ownership. There is real fear and anxiety, but the Government has no understanding of it. No matter what he says, I do not believe the Minister has such an understanding.

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