Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. Sinn Féin will support the legislation. It is slightly overdue, in that the pandemic has been going on for more than a year now. The vast majority of measures in the Bill deal with issues that have arisen because of the pandemic and the delays people have had, not being able to meet and that type of circumstance. Many of the key things outlined in respect of section 14 around the court and going to an appeal probably constitute the big stuff that needs to be dealt with because it has had negative impact on people who have been trying to deal with PIPs. Speaking to people in MABS and working with Abhaile, it is something they have highlighted as needing to be fixed as soon as possible.

While the issues we deal with today are mainly around the pandemic, the broader context is worthy of note. The arrival of Abhaile on the scene as a scheme within MABS has been transformative for many people. Something that I suggest the Minister look at with some urgency is the sustainable future of that scheme within MABS to ensure it is properly funded and kept in place to ensure it is there for people. It provides a certain degree of security to people when they have the Abhaile voucher, which allows them to get legal advice on whether they are suitable to go into a PIP scheme in the first place. It ensures that if an arrangement is put in place by the practitioner and is rejected by the lending institution, the banks or whatever and it goes to court, people have a legal standing and are supported through all that. The Abhaile scheme does that and is absolutely vital and is one of the more necessary things that has come from all this.

Much of the debt people are dealing with may have originated as debt they had with one of the banks, such as AIB, Bank of Ireland or Ulster Bank, many of which have moved and sold those loans on when they became distressed, as they call it, and they are now in the hands of entities, some of which are not even banks at all, such as Pepper, Start Mortgages and Everyday Finance. People can find it very difficult to deal with some of these entities. I understand that with the arrival of Abhaile on the scene and the fact that there is support for the person in debt so that when they go to court, often the court will uphold the arrangement put in place, many of these organisations are now accepting the arrangement and are prepared to continue with it. Some of the banks are still resistant to it. I think Bank of Ireland, in which the State has a share, is one of the most difficult to deal with. That has been the experience of many people working in MABS and Abhaile. It is something to note.

Many of the banks have various sets of criteria they put in place as to arrangements they will facilitate. These vary between the different banks. There is work to be done on this. The Minister of State said the Department was hoping to deal with further legislation later in the year. Perhaps work could be done on that to bring some sense of regulation into that area to provide certainty that when people go to negotiate with the banks, the kind of arrangement they would get would not depend on which bank or vulture fund they owed the money to but that the arrangements would be clear and people would know what they were dealing with. Work might be needed on the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, and I am sure the Minister of State would acknowledge that.

The general issue many people have is that they fell into debt and they find themselves often able to repay that debt but, because arrears exist, the lending institution will progress proceedings against them and may even get a court order, particularly if the assets are more than the family home - they might have land or a piece of property - even though they are meeting the repayments. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with and acknowledged. Many of these lending institutions are looking at what is owed and what the asset is worth. If the asset is worth more than what is owed, they will pursue the people regardless of the impact that has on the human beings. We have to understand these are families in many cases, who feel very distressed and are under huge pressure because of the situation in which they find themselves, often because they tried to better themselves or to progress things. They might have tried to expand or develop a business they had and it did not work out for them. It certainly was not their intention to fall into debt, to defraud or anything like that, yet that is how the banks treat them, that is, as though they had set out to rob the bank. Often people's experience is the other way around, when they see the interest rates etc. we are being charged in this country by the main lending institutions.

At the core of all this is the problem in banking policy in this country and how that is to be resolved. It a big issue that the Government needs to come to terms with. Today, the average family home which is mortgaged is paying an interest rate almost double that of any other country in Europe, yet the money the bank borrowed to lend to the person with the average family home is borrowed at the same interest rate as in every other country in Europe, from the European Central Bank. There is clearly a problem here. When we investigate a little, we are told the main reason is because of bad debt in the past and the level of reserves banks need to have are higher because of the misdeeds of the past. Of course, these misdeeds were not those of the public or the people who went out to borrow money or even the person getting the mortgage today but were the misdeeds of the banking institutions themselves. Nevertheless, it is the public which has to carry the can. The unfairness of that clearly jars with a lot of people and if there is to be a move towards a resolution of the banking crisis we have had for the past ten or 15 years here, it is something we really need to get to grips with.

Many of the banks now talk of leaving and pulling out. Ulster Bank is talking about leaving and I understand it is most reluctant to enter into arrangements with people because of that. There are issues with other banks. There have been mergers and there are proposals in place but all have the same sense of setting out to make maximum profit at the expense of ordinary people in business and ordinary workers. The role of the Government in this regard is to provide a level playing field and to represent the vast majority of the ordinary people who are doing their best. People are doing their best but they often find themselves in difficult circumstances and find they are not protected as they would expect, with the banks and lending institutions having the upper hand. We need to rebalance that. The measure here today is pandemic-related but I hope the further work coming down the track will go a considerable distance to bring balance back to that situation.

Apart from working on the issues of insolvency and people in debt, we need to examine the bigger picture of banking policy in this country and how we are going to get over the clear difficulties. Those difficulties are not only a problem when people get into debt; they are also a problem for the functioning of our economy. That also needs to be recognised. Our economy cannot function as long as we have a broken banking system. The vast majority of people would state that is exactly what we have. When they need credit, they cannot get it. The people who have money are given more and more of it. It is one of these totally imbalanced sets of circumstances in which the Government needs to play a stronger role. It needs to be the hand that balances and regulates because if it is simply left the markets, they will run amok, as they have done in the past. Therefore, there is a strong role for the Government.

We will certainly be supporting this legislation. While we could, of course, say amendments are required and that there is this, that and the other to be done, the Bill's urgency requires its passage through these Houses with the utmost speed. I hope we can consider further legislation later on and introduce further measures to try to rebalance the situation.

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