Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

In this case, what is in it for the lender is that the Department of Social Protection has set aside a budget of €50 million. Senator Byrne might ask what, in the overall scheme of things with banks, is a mere €50 million and I can understand that. Nonetheless, the banks are very anxious to have as much payment towards the debts of their poor unfortunate customers in mortgage difficulty and what we need from those banks is a balanced response to assist people.

The following, to which Senator Byrne referred, may be of interest to the Senators. In terms of the duration of mortgage interest supplement in 2011, roughly 37% of those receiving a mortgage interest supplement were doing so for one year or less; some 26% were receiving it one to two years; and the balance of over 40% were somewhere between two years and six years. The mortgage interest supplement was originally meant as a short-term supplement. On Senator Byrne's query about the term "mortgage" as opposed to "housing loan", of course, the mortgage interest supplement was originally to help those who had a local authority loan, for the most part a housing loan, who had unexpectedly lost their employment. In that sense, it was almost one arm of the State - the local authority loans were centrally funded by the State - assisting somebody to stay in a local authority because if the person had lost the local authority house that he or she was buying, he or she would have ended up back in another local authority house.

There is a problem for some. If the mortgage interest supplement goes on for a long period of time and the recipient gets an opportunity of employment, he or she may - a little like in the case of the rent supplement - find it difficult to accept the offer of employment because he or she is so reliant on the mortgage interest supplement. This is an area where we must look at what we can do that improves the interaction and the commitment, in particular, of the lender, to deal with the mortgage arrears and to deal with the borrower with a view to assisting the borrower to be able to stay in his or her family home and over a period of time, to meet his or her commitments or to revise his or her commitments to meeting a mortgage. That is the objective.