Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

On Monday afternoon I received a telephone call from a constituent who is a mortgage customer of Permanent TSB. This person lost his job and had to go America for a number of months last year to enable him meet his repayments. During the period he was in America, his mortgage changed from being fixed to variable, which meant instead of paying a rate of 3.5%, he was now required to pay a rate of 6.2%. When he returned, he realised that and engaged with Permanent TSB, which gave him no hearing on the matter, in spite of the fact that he had honoured his commitment and found himself in the position where he had to travel abroad to get the resources to pay his mortgage. That his mortgage almost doubled because Permanent TSB would not engage with him or leave him on the fixed rate is appalling. As far as I am concerned, those people are not bankers. I would describe them as thugs. It is appalling to think that type of thing is still going on here.

I agree with other colleagues who welcomed the fact that the Government is finally facing up to the fact that we must introduce a proper regulated lobbying system. What happened in the past was appalling and a proper, well-thought out registered system of lobbying is appropriate, which would allow a cooling off period and which would allow people to be aware both of what is going on and of the identity of the lobbyists. I caution against over-regulating such as happened in other countries. In America, for example, if one is not registered as a lobbyist there is something wrong. We must have a balance in that regard. I call on the Deputy Leader to facilitate a discussion, perhaps by way of a question and answer session in the House, with experts from abroad in attendance, in order that we would have a full-----