David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support the call made by Senator Darragh O'Brien for a debate on town and village centres. A pop-up policy has been put in place in Carlow which looks at encouraging enterprises to take up opportunities in vacant properties. It is a pilot scheme and is worthy of debate.

I call for a debate on the whole issue of public and private debt, the significant issue which has not been sorted out in Europe. Our European and this State's leaders simply have not learned the lessons of the real reason why this country is in crisis. We have a huge mountain of banking debt that was taken on by this State. We also have significant levels of personal debt with families in mortgage arrears and having other loans they cannot service. Since the Government came into office, we now have twice as many people, some 185,000, in mortgage distress with 1,000 families every month falling into mortgage arrears. Of that 185,000, according to the Central Bank, up to 145,000 will not be able to pay their mortgages now or into the future unless their circumstances change. The bottom line is that as long as a family or an individual is servicing debts they cannot repay, then the economy will not be able to grow and the family's or individual's circumstances will not change. Unless we have a write-down of the private banking debt, taking it off the shoulders of the taxpayers and a restructuring of domestic mortgages to include a suite of interventions including mortgage write-downs, families will not be able to get out of the dire circumstances in which they find themselves and, accordingly, spend. So far the Government has not put in place any tangible proposals to help people in mortgage distress. The Government's latest initiative is to set targets for the banks to deal with mortgage resolution but the banks will retain a veto and can simply disregard the targets as they have done in the past.

I am calling for a debate on the whole issue of debt.

There is a need for the Government and the European Union to get serious about the real problems which are bearing down on ordinary working people, including the unsustainable levels of private and personal debt.