Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

The Senator should not get personal. We all have our personal lives and we all do our own thing in our personal lives. The Senator does not know anything about my personal life and he should not throw stuff across the House about what I do not know and what he knows and that I was never in a bank. This is all nonsense. The Senator should take this matter seriously.

What we are trying to do is to give a hierarchy of solutions to people who have impaired mortgages. The first solution is, without any recourse to the law, to try to do a deal with the mortgage provider. The banks and building societies have just agreed with the Central Bank that they will bring forward a menu of solutions. They have also segmented their lending books to see what solutions would apply to certain categories of lenders. They are also hiring in people who are in a position to talk to customers and resolve their issues in a fair and frank way. This is the first tranche. Last Wednesday, most of the banks put out press statements indicating the approach which they would take. They have committed to the Central Bank and to the economic management council of the Government, that they will put the arrangements in place between now and the end of the year. Simultaneously, the insolvency Bill will proceed through the Houses of the Oireachtas. The Bill amounts to 200 pages of legislation. If the Senator wants to ram it through during the next three weeks without due consideration, I do not think this is the way to carry out legislative business because this Bill needs some consideration-----