Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Although I commend the logic of the Fianna Fáil amendment, I liken it to putting an Elastoplast on the hull of the Titanic as it went down. The mortgage crisis is much bigger than this Government admits. Listening to the debates on this Bill I get a sense that the Government is totally out of touch with the mortgage crisis, the 190,000 households that are in mortgage distress, the one in four residential mortgage-holders who are unable to meet their repayments. This will certainly not help that scenario. We see this Government following the flawed policy of the previous one, backing up the banks and giving them all the powers to which Senator O'Brien alluded. It is hard, therefore, to take the crocodile tears of Fianna Fáil on this issue when it created the bubble and the crisis and is now making atonement by proposing an amendment to this Bill. Our stance, as it has been at every Stage of the Bill, will be to oppose it. It is plainly an eviction charter with one simple purpose, namely, to empower the banks to take over people's family homes. Sinn Féin will not stand over that. We will not support this Bill, and although we appreciate the logic behind the amendment, I do not believe it will help at all.