John Whelan (Labour)

I wish to share time with Senator John Kelly.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, for attending this debate to listen to our earnest views on this important issue. I am grateful to colleagues on all sides for offering cross-party support for the motion and adopting non-partisan positions on what is a serious matter.

While the longest day of the year fell this week, one needs to spend time on the dole if one wants to know how long days feel. I do not know if any of the Senators present had the misfortune and experienced the indignity of spending time on the dole. Having spent the past three years unemployed, I know all about long days.

Three years ago, I wrote that the fear of losing one's home is much worse than the shock of losing one's job. The motion does not propose debt forgiveness for speculators, landlords or people who bought properties off plans with a view to making a quick profit by selling them on. It refers specifically to family homes.

One hears a great deal about gravy trains and people ripping off the social welfare system. While I do not deny that some people do not have any scruples in this regard, my personal experience of the social welfare system was that I received €70.80 per week for 18 months prior to entering the Seanad because my wife was working a three-day week. This sum does not suggest I was on a gravy train, nor would one be able to pay much of a mortgage with it. People find themselves unemployed not through any fault of their own but because they lose their jobs. I believe the number of people who are unemployed is much higher than 450,000 because this figure does not take account of many self-employed people who have closed their businesses or shops and did not join the live register.

I commend Senator Hayden for introducing the motion. Forbearance is important but it is not a solution. While I accept Senator Darragh O'Brien's point that it is important to contact one's bank when one is in financial trouble, people who find themselves in difficulty are aware that their local or regional bank manager will not have any say in the matter. They will be referred instead to a head office in Dublin where no one will answer their telephone calls. They will be treated as a number and offered a six-month arrangement under which they will pay interest only on their mortgage. This is not a solution because without a structured and considered response the train will hit the buffers at the end of the six-month period.

The issue before us is not about the European Union, International Monetary Fund or macroeconomics but about thousands of personal tragedies which are unfolding nationwide each week. I will not take up Senators' time by cataloguing the details of various cases other than to note than on Monday last a woman in Portlaoise informed me that she had deferred buying a cheap roll of new wallpaper for her sitting room because she was not sure if she would still be living in her home at the end of the summer. Her partner had taken his life in August last year and she did not have any means to pay her mortgage. For many people there is a fate worse than death, namely, living in perpetual debt without seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.

Many individuals are under severe pressure and do not have any means to cope. This motion is a genuine attempt to provide a structured, fair and sustainable solution to a major problem. One glaring omission in the debate, both inside and outside the Oireachtas, has been the failure of the banking industry to produce a single, positive or constructive proposal. Despite the many consultants, executives and economists employed in banking, the sector has not produced a single model to tackle the problem. They are obsessed with covering their bad decisions. A high political price has been paid for the problems that have occurred and shareholders and investors have also taken it in the neck. The only group that has not been held to account are the chief executives and senior officials of the banks. Does the Minister of State believe it is acceptable that those responsible for the collapse of the banks, which have effectively been nationalised, have not been held accountable? I favour the proposal made by Mr. Mike Soden, a member of the Central Bank commission, that bank directors, governors or senior executives who were involved in the banking collapse should not be in their posts.

It is remarkable that Bank of Ireland lent more money between 2003 and 2008 than in the entire previous century.