Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)

Yesterday the expert group on mortgage arrears published its report. Sadly, it has given little succour to the 20,000 young families who are in mortgage arrears. Some of them are at the end of the 12-month moratorium and their houses will be repossessed. It was a missed opportunity. I was waiting and expecting that it would be a positive report, and God knows we need some positivity. What worries me is that the only recourse that some of these people have now is to hand in the keys of their homes, and surely that is not the correct way of going about it. There are 56,000 people on the housing waiting lists in this country and there is no opportunity for them to be socially housed. We need to do everything possible. I ask the Leader for a debate on this because the report really has fallen short of providing a way to help those who are about to have their houses repossessed. The Government promised in 2009 that it would look after people who were indebted. I ask the Leader to have an urgent debate on the report to see how we can help people and examine ways in which we could extend it. I appreciate that some will have their interest deferred, but those are not the ones who are really suffering. I refer to the 20,000 who are desperately in arrears. That is a significant number of people. We need to keep these people in their homes somehow.