Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

Go raibh maith agat a Aire ag teacht anseo inniu. In some ways the Minister's presence here today is unfortunate because as Minister for Finance he has many things to do rather than attend the Seanad for the taking of statements. We should be passing legislation, passing the Personal Insolvency Bill, rather than just talking about it. This Oireachtas will have let the people down if we do not do everything possible to pass that Bill before the summer recess. If we break up for the summer without having passed it, we will send a bad message to the public. I am willing for the House to sit as long as it takes to pass it because it must be welcomed in principle.

There is a number of issues for the Minister to consider. The case by case approach needs to be radically re-considered within the policy-making set up of the Department. That approach is the root cause of many of the problems we have today. People do not know where they stand with their banks. If there are objective criteria with which the banks and borrowers in distress are obliged to comply, then it is far easier for those borrowers to negotiate with their banks, but currently because of Central Bank regulation they are forced to go their banks and set out, in humiliating fashion, the list of their expenditures on a weekly basis and the banks has to judge as to whether they are appropriate. What is needed is the setting of a standard amount of money people in distress should have to spend on mortgages, be it 25%, 30% or 35% of disposable income, and they should be let spend the remainder of their income on anything else, which inevitably will be the ordinary necessities. It will not be luxuries or other goods about which the banks are concerned. The case by case approach is putting borrowers in very vulnerable positions and needs to be radically rethought.

We need to make the family home inviolable in this context. While the Bill goes some way towards that - I read the provisions regarding the family home - and that is positive, we need to go a step further and stipulate that the family home will not be repossessed and to have some authority, as we proposed in our Bill, to decide on that and to give people options in regard to the family home and not have a get out clause, as is provided in the Bill in regard to the family home. The family home should be made inviolable subject to people working with their banks. Has the Minister considered the introduction of a tax relief for persons who are forced to leave their family home to rent it out, on which there may or may not be a tax liability? A person who has left his or her house or apartment to rent elsewhere to make up ends meet should be exempted from income tax for at least a year or two. I am not sure that would involve much of a cost to the State but it would give people encouragement.

Is it true that the banks submitted their proposals to the Central Bank and the Department about a year ago and that we have been waiting a year for policy makers in the Department and in the Central Bank to sift through the ideas submitted by the banks? I understand from those in the banking sector it has been a year of delay.