Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion from Sinn Féin and am glad to get an opportunity to speak on it. The banking system in this country has gone back to the way it was before this country bailed out the banks. They are making massive profits on the backs of ordinary people, that is, brave people who decided to buy or build a house, people who work and provide tax in this country, and people who have not asked the State to help them in any way. I refer especially to people who bought a second-hand house as their first house. They never got the benefit of the help-to-buy scheme or of any other scheme, and now they find themselves month on month having to face a higher bill to keep the roof over their heads. We talk about people who get up early and go to work. These are the people who are keeping this country going and providing the economic dividend for the State to have so much money in its coffers at the moment.

I have called for mortgage interest relief to be brought in but have said it should be made available for this year, 2023, to mortgage holders. I do not believe there is a big price to be paid for this, because if we do not help people who are under pressure financially due to having decided to put a roof over their own head rather than wait for the local authorities to do it for them, we are going nowhere. I agree with the sentiments of a number of Deputies who talked about the banks selling off mortgages in bundles to vulture-type operations that have spent the past eight to ten years sucking payments from people, yet the interest rates go up and the capital is not going down, and they have made people prisoners in their own houses, with a threat every month that if they do not pay up, they will lose their house. I thought that kind of stuff had gone away. I thought the banks had said they were sorry for all they had done wrong. We bailed them out, and we are back at it again.

I reiterate that first-time buyers who bought second-hand houses have received nothing from the State. They have paid their taxes on these houses, all the registration fees and so on, even having put money into refurbishing their houses. They now need something, and now is the time for the Government to step up and do it. In fact, they have paid stamp duty and everything else, and they have been more or less left there as though they are not relevant at all in this matter. These are the same people who put their children through college and pay for it themselves because they work. They pay for everything and this is just one call they are looking for.

It is important we do this now and do not dilly-dally with it. The Government has an opportunity in the budget, which is coming up in three weeks, but it should not take a half-baked measure on it or a spin on it or tell us it will sort out the issue next year or the year after. This is immediate. People are waiting for relief and we need to give it to them. So many people who have come into my office would surprise the Minister of State with the stress they have from the cost of living. These are people who might have a house and cars and travel to work - everything looks fine - but when they tell you their story about their financial position, there are no savings and everything is being looked at.

There is an onus on the Government to make sure we sort this out for these people and that we also put manners on the banks once again. It is high time that was done, because if they get away with this and with the profits they are making, they will get away with other things in the future. We should have learned a lesson when they went bust and when they came crying and looking for money and we gave it to them. Now is the time for payback. Now is the time for them to admit they have been doing wrong over recent years, making enormous profits, and say they are going to give back those profits in a windfall tax to the State. If they do not do that, other measures will have to be taken to deal with the banks. They have gone wild again and it is time to put them in their place.

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