Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very disappointed at the Minister's reply. Since I issued a statement two weeks ago, my office has been inundated by calls from families from all over the Twenty-Six Counties. The Minister and his colleagues all know about these. Why are they not dealing with them? It is shocking that we can transpose any kind of directive from Europe which relates to the environment or is anti-farmer. However, this is an EU directive that has not been transposed and must be transposed. It is shameful for the Minister to stand up and give me those answers today because the Government is not dealing with it.

Ten years on, we look at the number of lives that have been lost, the number of suicides, the number of marriage breakups, the number of people with mental health issues and the number of repossessions and outright blackguarding of families. We in this country fought to get our freedom only to allow the vulture funds and big banking houses to carry on like this. The Government's softly-softly approach will not deal with it. Why does the Minister not give a date here for the immediate transposition of this EU directive into Irish law? Who is the Government protecting? I will not ask whom it is loyal to - we know where that got me before. Who is it protecting? It is not loyal to the people, daoine na hÉireann who elected the Government. I plead with the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Finance to act to stop this sabotaging and plundering - it is worse than in Cromwell's time - of family homes and businesses to make money for the stock exchange in New York. I fully support Ed Honohan in his travels to New York to expose this carry-on at the stock exchange there. This must be stopped. It is outright criminal.

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