Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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1. To ask the Taoiseach the number of occasions on which the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears has met since the beginning for the summer recess. [39064/13]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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6. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet sub-committee on the mortgage crisis last met. [39088/13]

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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16. To ask the Taoiseach the number of meetings the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears held since the summer recess. [40866/13]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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19. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears last met. [42212/13]

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1, 6, 16 and 19 together.

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Will the Taoiseach say that again, please?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Nos. 1, 6, 16 and 19 together. Big Dáil change here.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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These are on mortgages. The Taoiseach is listening.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Of course I am. I made an offer to the Deputy last week to help him even further, but we will talk about that again.

The Cabinet committee on mortgage arrears and credit availability has met twice since the Dáil summer recess, most recently on 30 September. That answers the question.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach did not say much. Did anyone else hear what he said?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Very succinct answers today.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach has finished.

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I was ready to rise on a point of order because I had been advised that the Taoiseach was going to take Questions Nos. 1 to 22, inclusive, together. Since they cover a range of issues, I was going to tell the Taoiseach that he needed to answer them in a more definitive way. When he stated that he would take Questions Nos. 1, 6, 16 and 19 together, I was pleased for him until I got his answer.

The sub-committee on mortgage arrears, no matter how often it has met, is not grasping the fact that the personal insolvency service is deeply flawed and not fit for purpose and that many families in mortgage distress will be barred from using it. I am delighted that the Taoiseach quoted Sinn Féin's alternative budget two or three times. He may have noted that we provided for 100 extra publicly funded personal insolvency practitioners. They are necessary, as there are 185,201 residential mortgages in distress. Under the Taoiseach's governance, the number of families in distress has doubled.

I raised a matter with the Taoiseach last week. Grant Thornton Debt Solutions, one of the largest personal insolvency practitioners, carried out a study of 1,057 cases of mortgage distress. It concluded that only one in seven, some 14%, would avail of a personal insolvency arrangement and that 43% of families earned less than the level of reasonable living expenses set by the Insolvency Service of Ireland. Those families have nothing left with which to pay down their mortgage debts. Does the Taoiseach accept that, according to the analysis done by Grant Thornton Debt Solutions, this number of people have nothing left? If they have nothing left, how can they be expected to come out of mortgage distress?

The main problem is that the banks have been given a veto. I suggest that the Government should consider having an independent mortgage restructuring panel, one that has teeth, is appointed by the Minister and has the statutory power to agree and impose agreements on lending institutions where it believes that such agreements would enable mortgage holders to remain in their family homes. I commend this idea to the Taoiseach and ask him to respond positively.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Adams is aware that the Government has put in place a whole range of things for mortgages that are in distress. I gave some figures on this last week, I think. At the end of June this year, there were 770,610 private residential mortgage accounts. Out of those, 97,874 were in arrears of more than 90 days.

What is the position here? Clearly, the first point of engagement is between the borrower and the lender. They will not be sorted out unless there is that kind of engagement across a range of options. That is something that should be taken up by everybody.

The Deputy talked about having a sort of independent mortgage restructuring operation. Eighty thousand mortgages have been restructured already. That is an agreement between the lender and the borrower. Eighty thousand of them have been restructured. That restructuring is to be on a sustainable basis. That means that, for the borrowers, they are able to repay the agreed figure and still have, obviously, an income to spend and-----

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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We do not know that.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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-----for the lenders, they have signed off on that as being a sustainable solution to a problem that had arisen. I understand the Central Bank has to audit all of these figures that have been submitted by the banks to the Central Bank, which is their licensor, if the Deputy knows what I mean. The indications are that 76%, almost 77%, of those restructured mortgages are actually paying their way and are sustainable, as agreed between the lender and the borrower. If one took any of those and had a different system of deciding what it should be, I am not sure that it would be all that helpful, to be straight with the Deputy.

The personal insolvency agency obviously opened its doors for business a number of weeks ago.

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The banks have a veto.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yes, but while the banks can disagree with the proposition, the fact of the matter is that we have already put into law the stay on any process of repossession until all options are considered. While the banks can disagree with an option that is set out by a practitioner, clearly the last option open is one of bankruptcy, where the banks have no option at all and obviously would lose very heavily. It is in banks' and lenders' interests to be able to sit down with the borrowers, discuss their circumstances, discuss the situation in which they find themselves and work out a solution.

Eighty thousand of these have been restructured. Having spoken recently to the Governor of the Central Bank, the Central Bank must verify and audit the figures that have been submitted by the banks, as I said last week to Deputy Martin. Nobody can be happy with a situation where this is not happening as quickly as one would like. I trust that the pressure that is on here now will see that this happens.

The banks have 4,500 split mortgages, either in trial operations or on offer to customers. One of the banks the other day made its decision in respect of a reduction in an interest rate on a portion of a mortgage that might be warehoused. There is a trial going on at the moment. The split mortgages will be listed in the Central Bank's statistics when they have been operated successfully for a six month period.

When the Deputy speaks of the bank veto - we dealt with this before - the reality is that it is in the best interests of the debtors and the creditors to seek to conclude an acceptable and workable bilateral arrangement under the personal insolvency legislation, be it by debt settlement arrangement or personal insolvency arrangement.

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Why is the Taoiseach against independent adjudication?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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At the end of the day, the person who borrowed borrowed from a lender. A personal insolvency practitioner, if it is necessary to go through the insolvency agency, will sit down with the people and work through all of the options. This is independent.

The banks may disagree with that, but the end of that line is bankruptcy where they get nothing. It is therefore in the interests of lenders to work out an acceptable and agreed sustainable solution. By that I do not just mean putting it on interest free for another few years. That is not sustainable in the longer term. It is necessary to give the insolvency agency a period to see how effective it is. It has worked well in other jurisdictions and there is no reason why it should not work well here. The evidence is that, of the 80,000 that have been restructured, almost 7% clearly seem to be on a path of sustainability, which is in the interests of the borrowers who are living in the houses. Obviously it is an agreed position with the lenders, be they mainline banks or whatever.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Patrick Honohan, has confirmed that 74,000 of the 98,000 mortgage holders in arrears of more than 90 days at the end of June were not yet in an arrangement. Targets have been missed all over the place. More worrying, of the 35,000 proposed resolutions offered by banks to the end of June, 62% referred to surrender or repossession of property. The Taoiseach has set his face against any independent mortgage arrears resolution office or household debt resolution office, which we proposed over two years ago. All the evidence points to the error of the Taoiseach's ways. He seems to think that lenders will ultimately do what is in the best interests of the person in arrears, but I do not share the Taoiseach's view. The anecdotal evidence is that the banks, and lenders generally, are moving more towards repossession and surrender of property as the first resort rather than the last. The Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears has got it fundamentally wrong in terms of its overall strategy. It has not met often enough. Does the sub-committee think that is satisfactory? Is the Taoiseach happy with that high level of reference to repossessions and surrender of property as the first resort?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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No, I am not. The evidence given before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, which the Governor attended himself for a considerable period, set out his view. Clearly, however, the lenders - which are the banks - have, in 80,000 cases, reached agreement on a sustainable solution. I do not accept that letters stating it is the intention to proceed down the road of repossession is a solution to a problem.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is what has happened in 35,000 cases, however.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yes but clearly, as happened in other jurisdictions where these letters arrived, and where there was no engagement, it brought a measure of engagement hopefully leading to a conclusion that is in everybody's interest. We deliberately inserted in the Act a section whereby a judge has a right to put a stay on all processes of repossession until every option and circumstance involved in a person's mortgage is explored and discussed. In that way, every possibility of having a sustainable solution to the problem - and, as the Deputy is aware, all the circumstances are different - can be put on the table.

The Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Honohan, is completely independent. He has been strong in saying he wants the banks to do more and we all share that view. The Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears was established to engage, through the Department of Finance, with the banks and the Central Bank so that everybody understands all the options that are on the table and how they can be processed. It would be great if another 20,000 or 25,000 arrangements were made in addition to the 80,000 already agreed.

It is important to wait to see the analysis and audit by the Central Bank of the figures submitted by the banks. How serious are they, are they real and is there any attempt to put in figures and numbers just for the sake of it? These matters concern people in their homes who are anxious to work out a sensible solution. Ultimately, it has to be done either directly with the lender or through the personal insolvency practitioner who has authorisation, through the agency, to work through all the circumstances of any individual mortgage in distress.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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There is a proposal today for the suffering former residents of Priory Hall, which involves cancellation of their mortgages - as we know, they were on a criminally compromised residential complex, which was a fire trap - State-sponsored remediation of the fire hazard, and new secure homes for a range of people. The residents are considering those proposals and I will not transgress on that matter. They are the type of solutions that some of us suggested two years ago when this scandal came to light. Yet for two years suffering has been imposed on people while the Government dragged its feet.

Can the Taoiseach not learn the lesson of the mortgage arrears crisis? There have already been years of agony for many home-owners who were forced to buy their homes at blackmail prices, in that era of speculators, profiteers and bondholders, as well as governments under their sway. There were years of agony as the crash inevitably happened. They have been left with massive negative equity and unsustainable monthly mortgages. On numerous occasions, I have called for an overall solution, that is, the wiping out of negative equity, calibrating down to the real value of those properties for their owner-occupiers, and calibrating down monthly repayments. That is the solution which would end the suffering. It would make the lives of so many people so much better. In addition, it would release huge new amounts of liquidity funds into the real economy providing jobs and services because people would not be shackled to the banks 24 hours a day, all year round.

Although, admittedly, there will then probably be a new face in the Taoiseach's position, rather than Deputy Kenny's, will we be back here in two, three or five years with the same suffering? Can the Taoiseach not learn the lesson? Will he bring that message to the next meeting of his Cabinet sub-committee on mortgage arrears and move on it?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy suffers from a lack of confidence about the future. The Priory Hall fire-traps were a legacy of an era that, I hope, is gone forever.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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There are perhaps many, as yet, undiscovered.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy and I have discussed this matter before. These kind of fire-traps should never have been allowed to be built in the first place.

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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Of course.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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While one cannot and should not paint every developer with the same brush, what happened in the case of Priory Hall was a scandal and a disgrace. A number of weeks ago, we looked at this matter seriously. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, made some comments yesterday. The residents now have the opportunity to discuss the detail of that and make their decision. I hope that we will not be back here in a few years with the same proposition.

Reports indicate that the property situation in Dublin and the greater Dublin area is beginning to improve. I hear of people queuing to see houses or apartments on offer. I have reports of extensive requirements for public housing in different areas.

That situation is not replicated everywhere in the country but there are some signs of movement. Negative equity is not an issue for people who do not have a job. Those who were working and have lost their jobs find themselves in a position of distress. It is hoped that banks and other lenders will engage constructively in the process of cutting a deal that is sustainable for borrowers and them. The point made by the Deputy has been made here on many other occasions. The committee on mortgage arrears is not oblivious to that. We all want to see a situation whereby solutions are worked out so that people can know with some degree of certainty that they can meet their mortgage repayment requirements while at the same time being able to live their lives. Nobody wants to go back to the situation to which the Deputy quite rightly referred.

The Deputy can take it that the Cabinet sub-committee dealing with this issue will continue to focus on ensuring that the suite of options put in place are followed through quickly, diligently and fairly so that sustainable solutions to particular problems are found. This is, and will continue to be, the remit of the Cabinet sub-committee. It is hoped that when the Governor is in a position to report on the audit of figures submitted by the banks, the targets set out will have been achieved, which targets are rising by each quarter. I genuinely hope that we get to a point as quickly as possible whereby sustainable solutions will have been put in place for the majority of people, with banks continuing to focus on finding sustainable solutions in the remainder of cases.

I do not disagree with the principle of the Deputy's point. The Cabinet sub-committee is focused on getting results and solutions for all concerned.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is not that we lack optimism about the future when we ask these questions, rather it is that some of us and members of the public are fed up to the back teeth of warning against certain behaviour and activity by developers, and the bankers and Governments who facilitate them, and never being listened to. Regardless of how many times these warnings are issued, be it by political representatives or ordinary people, they are ignored, the Government permits this activity to continue and nobody is ever held accountable. I will give an example. When the Priory Hall issue arose and I heard the name Tom McFeely I knew I had heard it before. I then recalled that approximately ten years ago when a developer was trying to evict an 84 year old woman and three other residents from a block of flats in Charlemont Street so that he could build an apartment block, myself and a few others gathered with the residents and Charlemont Street community and mounted a 24-hour six week long protest to prevent those evictions and calling on Dublin City Council to, rather than permit this developer to evict people so that he could build an apartment block, take control of that site and construct social housing thereon. The developer involved was Tom McFeely. We succeeded and stopped him. Despite all the bullying and threatening, and his having a court order to evict an 84 year old woman from her home, we forced Tom McFeely to abandon the site and the council to take ownership of it. We said at that time that we would in the long run save public money. We should not be facilitating these gangsters. If we had not succeeded the result would have been another Priory Hall. What we should be doing is building affordable social housing so that the new market is not dominated by developers like Tom McFeely but we are never listened to. Even now, we are not being listened to.

The Government's policy on social housing is to outsource it to the same people, although not Tom McFeely this time but other people like him. The Government has abandoned the direct provision of social housing and has handed over, as the Taoiseach calls it, the most important market of a roof over the heads of human beings, which is the precondition for civilised existence, to the bankers and developers who got us into the mess we are in. The Government has also given the bankers the power to veto sustainable mortgage solutions. After all of the revelations of the past few weeks and given the attitude of the banks, did the Cabinet sub-committee not realise when it met on 30 September that a radical change of policy is necessary?

There has been much talk about sustainable solutions. We have discovered that the banks are trying to bully as much money as possible out of distressed mortgage holders. That is their strategy and we all know it. The Taoiseach knows it and I know it. We know from the deliberations of the Joint Committee on Finance Public Expenditure and Reform that their strategy is to squeeze every penny out of people. Even those who are forced to give up their homes by handing back their keys are being chased for outstanding money. There is no willingness on the part of the banks to accept that they must take some hit. There is also no willingness on the part of Government to enforce that hit on them. When will we see change? Are we going to continue to allow the McFeelys and bankers of this world dictate the pace of everything at the expense of ordinary residents? That is what makes people depressed. People are depressed that this is allowed to continue.

I recently discovered there may be a Priory Hall type issue with properties at the Pavilion site in Dún Laoghaire. I have heard that apartment owners living on the ground floor of the Pavilion apartment development, which some of us opposed and were denounced for doing so, have had to move out because damp rising from below has made them uninhabitable. There was no regulation. Despite public opposition, this development was backed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors. How many more tragedies like Priory Hall must there be before we finally wake up and stop these gangsters, opportunists and greed driven people controlling the provision of housing, the roof over the heads of families? That is what we want to know?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am not sure of the Deputy's question.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Taoiseach knows it well.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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This is one of a number of scandals across Irish society that was left to this Government to deal with.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach should not be playing politics with something that is fundamentally wrong in terms of how a local authority regulated. There were regulations in place.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Please allow the Taoiseach to continue.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach plays politics too often.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am responding to questions from Deputy Boyd Barrett and would appreciate it if there were no interruptions. The situation is that Priory Hall as constructed is a fire trap. When I purchased my home I had to obtain a fire certificate stating that the property was in compliance with the planning conditions. All of the residents of Priory Hall were asked to sign documents when seeking to draw down their mortgages. It has always been the case that these conditions had to be met prior to signing for and draw down of a mortgage.

The local authorities constructed thousands of houses down through the years. There are a number of cases in respect of which they too did not cover themselves in glory.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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They did better that Tom McFeely.

Obviously, those cases involved smaller houses. There is no reason the construction industry, in the provision of public and private housing, should not have integrity and enjoy trust. One cannot paint everybody in the National Asset Management Agency and all developers and contractors with the same brush. Clearly, the McFeely episode, which was a disaster for the people of Priory Hall, is iconic. There are pieces to the jigsaw and what we are doing and must do is put in place a process whereby a person who signs for a mortgage to buy a property can have trust in a system that measures up and is compliant.

Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to a development in Dún Laoghaire and there may be other cases. The Priory Hall case was appalling. A resolution has been placed before the residents who will make their views known this week.

During the years when the so-called Celtic tiger was running around the country, I came across cases of planning authorities refusing requests to build a single house in a particular location because it would obstruct the view, yet in certain circumstances the same local authority said it was fine to build 100 houses. The Deputy can see such developments himself.

There is pressure from families with three or four children who are living in one or two bedroom apartments and need housing.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We built box apartments.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Land is available and contractors with a good reputation who have not been involved in any scandalous carry-on have applied to build some of them. The Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, is working with the relevant organisations to see what can be done to provide good, proper housing for those who need it. There is a clear demand for several thousand homes.

Deputy Boyd Barrett and I know that what we need is a process that is clear, measures up and is effective. I recall cases where a good clerk of works would tell developer X to knock a building because it was not in compliance with planning conditions.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We no longer have clerks of works.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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What we need is an inquiry into the local authorities. That is where the real story lies.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We have to put in place a system where that type of approach applies and we do not have cowboys playing hard and fast with people's lives by placing them in fire traps.

In years gone by, very strict conditions had to be met when people were buying houses and mortgages would not be given unless these conditions were complied with and could be stood over. I understand fire certificates, which are an independent and important issue, were simply issued, which is not good enough. As I stated to Deputy Martin last week, 25 years ago the name and integrity of the agricultural sector were brought down, yet the sector is now at the highest level of competence and professionalism and accepted worldwide. We need a building and construction sector that has integrity, pride and a good name and can also be trusted. We must not return to the position Deputy Boyd Barrett described.

I hope that when they consider the proposition before them the residents of Priory Hall will find it acceptable. This would remove from the equation another running sore and sorry legacy of a time to which we do not want to return.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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I have been struck by the two previous contributions and would like to join them together. I ask the Taoiseach to arrange a plenary session of his Cabinet every 21 days to examine in a comprehensive manner the overall situation that obtains. Two weeks ago, Mr. Sebastian Barnes of the Fiscal Advisory Council, in describing Ireland's sovereign or national debt position as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, stated we ranked third after Greece and Italy in the debt table. A very important omission was made from that observation. The two thirds of the equation that are missing are household debt and non-financial corporate debt, which is business or small and medium enterprise debt. These are the two elements of the debt problem that weigh most heavily on Ireland. If one takes all three elements of debt in the economy, one finds that Ireland's debt is the highest in the world. This is the problem and the reason the banks are caught in paralysis. Their lack of capital means they are not getting on with the job of writing things down, as Deputy Higgins correctly noted, and they also lack competent board direction and management to articulate the operation of so doing.

The banks have been drawing out the problem in a slow-motion resistance exercise as they seek to preserve the capital they received following two inadequate capital assessment processes. The first of these occurred in March 2010, at around the same time as payments were made to bondholders from money borrowed from the euro system, by the Central Bank in the case of Anglo Irish Bank and by the European Central Bank in the case of the two pillar banks because Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland had acceptable assets or loan security. We must get real about this issue by assembling a robust combat team of negotiators to deal with the euro system and ensure the remaining banks, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, can secure creditor buy-in from the euro system for the remaining capital requirements they need to press on with the job. The two pillar banks also need to have competent experienced managers who can negotiate with customers.

Professional insolvency practitioners are a new profession and while some of them have experience, others do not, even if they are technically qualified. To use the analogy of the health of the nation, when a pandemic breaks out doctors cannot fly over cities in helicopters and spray antibiotics or other medicines over the population but will instead engage in case-by-case assessments. This also holds true for loans. The lack of evidence that the banks have engaged in the restructuring or sorting out of loans means they do not meet the requirements for performing this task. In other words, they do not have capital, experienced management and competent direction. Their boards have been weirdly absent-----

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy must ask a question.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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I ask the Taoiseach to convene a plenary Cabinet session to discuss these matters and to be advised, in an evidential way, about what is taking place at these levels.

The Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Patrick Honohan, demonstrated that the banks do not have experienced visitation audit or inspection teams. If they had, we would know better what is going on in the banks but we do not have a clue. No one has an honest, evidence based assessment of what is going on because the process is like being in a hall of moving mirrors. It is a tragedy because 100,000 households are in a distressed position and some of them are experiencing disease and death as a result. The creditors in Europe do not have a clue what is going on either, notwithstanding the pats on the head we may receive from Chancellor Merkel. Opinion articles written by the German finance Minister in the Financial Times have been correctly dismissed by evidence based counter-arguments showing that Mr. Schäuble does not have a proper handle on the issue.

Ireland is being pushed around like a tea trolley and Irish people have been burdened with approximately €60 billion of misplaced debts.

The two so-called pillar banks are behaving like zombie banks, and they need capital and management as I have said. The conversion of the promissory note into long-term 40-year bonds was not negotiated but given to us. It was only given to us because the outsiders know that Ireland's economic breathing would have stopped.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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There was no negotiation on that; it had to happen for us even to reach the last drawdowns of the assistance programme. There has been talk about us exiting the programme as if it is a positive step we will take. It is not. The people need to know that means we are just down to the last drawdowns - we are down on empty now on the loans. They have left us on empty and it is not right. The Germans have not got a clue.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Deputy to ask a question, please.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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Does the Taoiseach realise that the Germans did not even know in January 2012 that the €75 billion of private sector loan losses on the Irish people would have equated in a German scale to €1.2 trillion in misplaced bank losses on the German people? The reality is that its banks are very fragile at the moment. For some of them their gearing is 50 times; Lehman Brothers was only 32 times when it went bust. Can we get together a really fit-for-purpose combat team in the nicest sense? I do not mean throwing hand grenades but getting the truth out there - not just boring old lever-arch files but well-articulated positioning of where we are and what we have done.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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We saved Europe and we have got sweet damn all from Europe for it.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for his global analysis of the financial situation.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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It is only a taster of it.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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He is certainly not wrong in saying that experienced management was certainly lacking in the banks. Clearly, the extent of recapitalisation of the banks was an issue and obviously banks were given capital to deal with a range of mortgage options. The German general election is over. I understand negotiations are going on and it may take some time to determine what party or parties will form a government with the CDU. I accept it would be great to have a creditor buy-in from the European situation.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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We have not asked for it.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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In June 2012, the European Council signed off on the question of the ESM having the potential to recapitalise banks. There has been considerable discussion of that. I would not say the promissory note deal was given to Ireland. The Governor of the Central Bank is a member of the board of the European Central Bank.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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He created the promissory note.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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He negotiated very strongly Ireland's case there. I disagree with the Deputy from that point of view. Nor were the other issues surrounding that just given to Ireland. We agree that for some time banks have lacked the experienced management to be able to deal with these things. At the more local, national level of dealing with distressed mortgages, it has been necessary to retrain people whose previous occupation was, if one likes, lending money rather than dealing with circumstances where people are now in trouble. However, some 80,000 have been restructured. We would like that figure to be higher.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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They have been bandaged, not restructured.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We would like to think that the solutions worked out in those 80,000 and more are absolutely sustainable.

Household debt and business debt are clearly real issues. The Deputy asked for some sort of financial SWAT team to be put together to deal with this problem. The Cabinet meets every week and if it is necessary to report situations, the Minister for Finance, obviously, has his finger on the pulse.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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Does the Cabinet understand it?

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It is not a question of putting together some kind of exclusive SWAT arrangement here. The Cabinet actually meets every week and when it is necessary, this is discussed.

Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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It is not a SWAT; it is a combat team.