Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is just not possible to pay the Christmas bonus to everybody who is claiming, although I appreciate the difficulties some families have. People who are running into difficulties with mortgage interest repayments and so on should certainly investigate the mortgage interest supplement. So far we are providing mortgage interest support to more than 7,000 people. It is a particularly difficult situation and I have asked that the banks enforce the code of their own federation and refrain from foreclosing on people and taking houses from them where there are facilities to restructure their interest repayments or to re-mortgage. Benefit will of course be paid to people for 12 months, subject to their having the required stamps, but jobseeker's allowance will be available thereafter.