Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I cannot speak as fast as my colleague. The Minister knows the Government cannot stand by. I listened to him from my office when he spoke about the interaction he has with the banks and the Central Bank and what is being done. The Government cannot stand by as people are being hit with increase after increase in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. The Minister has received the same emails as we have. He can see how this is impacting on people who are just coming out of the financial crisis. They were severely hit with banks closing. They had to close businesses. They went through all of that. The trauma of having to absorb these interest rates at a time when the cost of everything else has greatly increased is impossible for them to bear.

They are told the only solution is higher mortgage payments when they are already undergoing such costs and they just cannot make sense of the cure to the higher energy and food prices being an increase to mortgage costs.

The Government has a responsibility to protect its citizens and that is the bottom line. The only way it can do that in the necessary timeframe is to introduce this mortgage relief. It needs to be targeted, as we said, to those who really need it and it needs to be time-limited. It must apply only to people's homes and not to second homes, holiday homes or rental properties and it should be capped at €1,500. This is a very sensible and necessary measure. Fianna Fáil supported mortgage interest relief when in opposition, so it should not be a problem now. The Government must put aside the party politics and work with Sinn Féin to bring in these supports. The Minister will have received one of the emails sent to me and other Deputies by the married father of four whose mortgage was increased from €715 six months ago to over €3,000. That is a 450% increase. He was on an interest-only mortgage. We have all these things we need to deal with.

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