Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge all those who spoke this evening in support of the motion. Where are all the Minister and Minister of State's backbenchers? Where are the Labour Party Members and the Sinn Féin Members? There are only a few of us in the Chamber and people are suffering distress and trauma. That is the way the Government has it. The Ministers' colleagues are all licking their wounds after the local and European elections.

I acknowledge also the great work that is done by the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, regarding this matter. This is a timely and important motion that should generate significant cross-party support. For us as rural Deputies, it is a source of significant alarm that farmers and businesses who for years have been operating in good standing with their banks are now being pursued through no fault of their own. It is shameful. This takes me to the heart of why we introduced the motion. As we have noted this evening, the most recent statistical mortgage arrears report from the Central Bank, which the Minister did not quote, to the end of the final quarter of 2018, concerning principal dwelling houses, shows that the significant majority of approximately 14,000 loans acquired by unregulated loan owners in the course of that quarter are performing restructures. The Ministers did not mention that at all. They used the statistics that suited them.

I will take no indignation from the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe. He said he understands it, but we do not understand it at all. Surely, if he understands it, that means he is complicit in wrongdoing. We know he is complicit in wrongdoing because we saw the bailiffs, the mercenaries, come in from Northern Ireland. We saw the way they kicked out the family in Balbriggan. We saw what happened down in Roscommon and in many other places and the Minister just stood idly by. There were no prosecutions. The Minister was complicit and stood idly by.

See this speech in context