Susan O'Keeffe (Labour)

We need to be in a position very soon to debate some of the ideas that the Minister of State has been working on. Those people who tell us and the Minister of State about their concerns are our families, our neighbours and our friends. They are not the people out there. They are our people and therefore, if we tell them that this is under active review, they will shake their heads and say "another active review". We have very little time on our side and it is up to us do something. In the spirit of this motion, it is a good thing that we can come in here in a cross-party way, offer ideas to the Minister of State and hope that the urgency of what we are saying will be translated to his Department.

Sub-prime lenders came into the market like sharks and understood exactly what they were doing when they sought out, almost in an abusive way, vulnerable people and decided to charge them more for a loan, fully in the knowledge that these people would not be able to repay. When they defaulted, the lenders threw extra charges at them and then said "Sorry, but we will have to take your house". Those lenders are still out there in some form or other. They are not faceless institutions. They have names such as Investec, Lehman Brothers, KBC and Kensington Mortgage Company, and indeed Permanent TSB and the EBS were involved at some stage in sub-prime lending.

The truth is that the Central Bank here cannot put a maximum on any rate. It cannot enforce a lender not to go above 8% or 10% or whatever, because under the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, the European Central Bank is not allowed to put floors of any kind on these rates. We will find ourselves in this situation again, because there will always be sub-prime lenders and sharks. Where there are people with in distress, there are sharks. One will find them in the phone book or on Google. "Have you mortgage problems? Have you debt problems? Ring us and we will sort it out". They will sort it out, but only at a price. I do not know the answer to that, but by ignoring this particular dilemma about the maximum rate, we are waiting for the problem to occur again at a later stage.

I commend the motion before the House. I am delighted that we have had the opportunity to debate this and even if we do not end up with the Scottish model, we will have a variation of it. The problem will not go away. The sub-prime people are out there and we have not addressed that in any way, and I do not know how we can.