John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I compliment my colleague, Senator Nicky McFadden, on initiating this Private Members' debate and welcome the Minister of State, Deputy John Curran. I am in agreement with much of what has been said, particularly by my party colleagues, Senators O'Reilly, Buttimer and McFadden.

A number of issues have been raised in the course of the debate. Senator Butler referred to the need for the Government to make tough decisions. We have been listening for a long time to the excuse that the Government is unpopular because it had to make tough decisions. No tough decisions have been made. It is just 30 days to budget day and we expect tough decisions will be taken because they need to be, otherwise what is already a very bad situation will be made much worse.

The Government decided to spend €4 billion on the recapitalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, the most reckless of all the Irish financial institutions and which will never again trade successfully. The Government ignored advice from many sectors, not least the Opposition benches when we pointed out that this was good money after bad. That €4 billion would go a long way towards helping the people about whom we are speaking. I am thinking, in particular, of many people in my own age group who left school or college and had no difficulty in finding work in the past few years. Many of those jobs are gone. I know many people who have left the country, handed back the keys to houses and will have a black mark against their creditworthiness which will remain with them if they ever return to Ireland. That is the sad reality. Thousands of families in new developments around this city and in the horseshoe commuter belt towns around Dublin and towns across the country paid extortionate amounts for houses that were not worth the money in the first place. They did so in the hope and belief they would be able to remain in employment and meet their mortgage repayments but that has not been the case for many of them. The Government has introduced certain measures such as NAMA, about which I have significant difficulties but at least it is an attempt to close a gaping hole. However, very little has been done for private individuals. The Fine Gael proposal to include private homeownership within the terms for NAMA is an attempt to show the ordinary suffering Joe Public that the Government is not just about bailing out banks but that it will do something for those individuals who have been badly hit. That is the biggest credibility gap for the Government but it has made no effort to fill it.

I am disappointed at the Government's proposal to amend the motion. Senator Boyle said the Government amendment included the proposals made in the motion but that is not the case. The amendment commends the Government on providing additional staff for MABS, which is a fantastic service. As a constituency politician, I have been dealing with it in my seven years in the House. In recent times I have referred many more of my constituents to its offices. To seek to claim credit for providing five full-time additional staff for MABS is pathetic and bears no resemblance to the pressure that organisation has to bear.

The Government seeks a clap on the back for the introduction of a statutory code of conduct in respect of mortgage arrears. However, there is no reprimand for those who breach the code which seems to be voluntary in its operation. It is all well and good for Government Senators to say that if the banks do such and such, we will introduce firmer controls, as we have reached that position already. The Government should do something more concrete to help people who find themselves in arrears on mortgage repayments. As I stated earlier, the reality is that thousands of people are in that position. The most recent figures on mortgage arrears for June 2008 state some 14,000 people are in that category. It is estimated this figure is now greater than 30,000 and the ESRI forecasts that by next year some 200,000 people will be in negative equity on their homes. This is a very disconcerting position, especially for any Irish person because we have had a tradition for centuries of ownership of homes and property. It goes to the very foundation of what makes us Irish because a major part of our struggle for independence and freedom was the fight for the land. There is a sense that if one does not own the property in which one lives something is not right. This is bred into our psyche. The people have a great tradition of home ownership and rates of ownership are significantly higher than throughout the rest of the European Union and the world.

This attachment to home is especially concerning for those families who face the possibility of repossession. There has been a significant increase in the past 12 or 18 months in the number of cases coming before the courts and the number of repossessions. By all accounts the figure will mushroom in the coming years. The Fine Gael proposal seeks to remove the process from the confrontational sphere of open court. It is very good and it should happen.

The proposal does not mean people who made errors and who owe substantial amounts of money should be let off scot free. However, it gives genuine people who, through no fault of their own, cannot find the money to meet mortgage repayments a degree of comfort to the effect that they will not face a team of barristers representing their financial institution across the floor of the court while trying to defend what, in many cases, is the only thing they own. We are not discussing the protection of people who speculated in land or people who accumulated several houses or properties in other parts of the world. At issue is the protection of the family home, which I believe is worth protecting. The Government has done nothing in regard to protecting such people, the reason I have a significant difficulty with the current situation.