Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is nice to have one's learned colleague interrupting. A day cannot go by unless Senator Coghlan interrupts me.

I feel that my life will not be complete unless he interrupts me. What we saw yesterday is that the Central Bank is, in effect, giving the banks a charter to evict people. It is amazing how language is used by governments. In war, governments talk about collateral damage. They do not talk about deaths or killing. In a financial crisis or mortgage crisis, they talk about people who will have their homes repossessed. They do not talk about evictions. That is, in effect, what the Government is allowing the banks to do. They talk in percentages, for example, 12% of people are in arrears. That is approximately 95,000 people who are in arrears for 90 days or more. Approximately 50,000 homeowners, people with mortgages, are in arrears of up to 90 days. That is hundreds of thousands of people ? our constituents, neighbours and friends ? who are in arrears.

We have seen what the banks have done in the past when they were told to engage with small businesses. They were told to give them loans and to meet certain targets. What happened was that they massaged the figures. We all know that small businesses cannot get loans from banks. The banks tell us they are meeting the targets. The Government is now setting new targets for mortgage arrears. We know the banks will massage the figures. We know what happens when governments allow banks to evict people because we have seen it in Spain. Last November the Spanish Government stopped banks evicting people for two years because of the massive increase in suicide.