Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

I am not happy with the Minister of State's response.

In trying to play down home repossessions, claiming the figures for them are not as great as they are in other countries, the reality is that home repossessions have increased 100% over the past year. Repossessions before and after Christmas have increased at an even higher rate.

Home repossession is just not a statistic. It is the repossession of the homes of people who bought houses at large prices who cannot genuinely meet their repayments due to the new financial circumstances. They are being chucked out of their homes by these banks who have been bailed out by taxpayers' — their — money. One home repossession is one too many when those affected are paying the salaries of the bank chief executive officers, the bank officials and those pen-pushers signing the orders to chuck people out of their homes. We cannot play it down because it is too serious an issue.

From our history, we all know from landlordism and evictions the importance to the Irish people of owning their homes. Compared to other countries in Europe, Ireland has the highest house possession. It is unfortunate the Government did not take decisive action to curtail home repossessions during the bank bail out.

We do not need to wait for a report on bankers' remuneration.