David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House and I welcome the fact that the Fianna Fáil Party has tabled this Bill. I find myself agreeing with much of what was said by Members on the Government benches and by the Minister of State. There are many shortcomings in the Bill; however, it is something that could be introduced by the Government. If it is not minded to support this Bill I hope action will be taken to deal with the very real issue of the crisis that many homeowners are facing in this country and also the issue of homelessness.

Recent figures released by the Central Statistics Office showed that for the first part of this year, house prices fell by about 12.5%. That shows we have not reached the bottom in terms of house prices, and there is the potential for further reductions. The ESRI also announced recently that it believes we will not return to the house price levels we saw during the boom years until 2030. We are faced with a real crisis. There are 86,271 mortgage holders who are classified as being in serious distress. This figure includes defaulted and renegotiated mortgages. More than 11% of all mortgage holders are facing some form of difficulty. This figure increased by 6,000 in the first quarter of 2011. This represents 500 families who are falling into serious mortgage distress every week.

We are here today trying constructively to come up with solutions to help families who are in mortgage distress. It must be pointed out that the reason many of those families find themselves in distress, and the reason many people find themselves unable to pay their mortgages, is the instruments and policies that are being delivered by this Government and that were implemented by the previous Government in trying to fix the fiscal problems faced by the country. The reason many people are finding it difficult to pay their mortgages is that they have lost their jobs, are underemployed or have seen their social welfare cut - and, of course, they have been subjected to the universal social charge and all of the other levies, taxes and wage cuts that have been imposed.

There is no doubt that there is a direct correlation between the policies which the Government will put in place to try to adjust what is a very real problem in terms of the fiscal situation and the fact that there is a knock-on effect for many families. They have less money to spend and are trying to juggle between paying the mortgage, heating bills and other bills. I also accept that this is a very complex issue. However, it is galling for many people to find themselves in this situation when they were encouraged during the Celtic tiger years to be part of the boom and buy a property. Getting on the property ladder was the thing to do. People feared that if they did not purchase a house during that time they would be unable to do so in the future.

Many people in their 30s are those most affected by this. It is the generation which isliving this nightmare more than any other. Some people bought multiple properties as speculators. I do not have any grá for any of those individuals. My primary concern is for people who bought a home and made an investment for themselves and their families. Those people find it galling that we arrived at this situation because the banks here were lending recklessly.

All of the Irish banks competed with each other. There was a race to the bottom in terms of who could lend to people at a cheaper rate, give them the best possible rates and offer 100%, or sometimes 110% or 120%, mortgages. There was a rush to get as much cheap money as possible from German banks, bondholders and individuals, all of whom had no difficulty fuelling the property bubble, lending money into the banks and creating that situation.

We spoke about white collar crime in the House earlier and the link between politicians, developers and the entire political system in terms of the property bubble. White collar crime is not a victimless crime. This issue is linked to that. This week one bondholder in Anglo Irish Bank will be paid €800 million. Over the course of the coming weeks €18 billion in borrowed money will be transferred from this State, which we had to borrow at a very high interest rates-----