Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This has been going on now for 15 months. The ECB has said very clearly that one in five mortgage holders have seen their mortgage interest increase by €5,700 on average since last year and one in three is paying €3,000 more than last year. We have come up with a proposal that would take 30% of that increased mortgage interest into the State's coffers and where it would be paid for by the State, up to a maximum of €1,500. We have asked the Minister to come up with a proposal for over a year now and he has not. This is a far cry from where he used to be. In 2018, he put this on the Dáil record:

In the 2016 general election Fianna Fáil was the only party of which I am aware that campaigned on the basis that mortgage interest relief would be retained and provided for in the budgetary and fiscal projections made at the time.

He said "I would have loved to have seen it retained at a rate of 100%" but this was the best he could negotiate with Fine Gael. Does the Minister know what the ECB interest rate was when made those comments? It was 0%. It has increased now ten times. The ECB interest rate has never been as high in the history of the State and ordinary people are being crucified with high interest rates and the Minister is coming up with nothing. I ask him again, on behalf of all those individuals, some of whom are now in the claws of the vulture funds, which the Minister's party and Fine Gael supported, what is he going to do? Is he going to ignore the commitment he made last time? When interest rates were 0% he was arguing for mortgage interest relief. When interest has never been as high in the history of the ECB, he is saying people should paddle their own canoe. It is not acceptable.

See this speech in context