Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not going to move amendment No. 2 because we have just passed amendment No. 1, which does exactly what we are looking for.

Amendment No. 4 is also in my name, and while I am not going to move it either, I ask the Minister of State to ensure the legislation does what that amendment proposes. It calls on the Minister to bring forward a report on the extension of the jurisdiction of the FSPO to cover all mortgage holders. This relates to the conversation we have just had regarding whether it covers pre-authorisation and so on. So many people have been caught out having been given assurances and told everything was okay. We would not even have known about this had someone not taken a case and pursued it, and the same applies to a lot of areas. When we think about the tracker mortgage scandal and the 40,000 cases, it was a handful of individuals, fewer than a dozen, who started that ball rolling and then we found out the issue was so widespread, with €1 billion of theft in reality.

This amendment would provide that after a sufficient period, the Minister would ask his officials to look at this with the FSPO and carry out an exercise to ensure that the Bill, with amendment No. 1 in particular, is doing what it is intended to do, namely, include all mortgage holders in the net. I am not asking for it to be put into the legislation but, in the spirit of the amendment, the Minister might ask his officials after a period to touch base with the FSPO, make sure there are no issues and report that to us.

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