Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment.

We are also dealing with amendment No. 13, which is my own amendment. We had quite a detailed discussion on this yesterday. I do not expect the Minister to launch into another dissertation similar to what she gave yesterday because we have already got the message. However, the message in this instance, and I assume it is similar coming from Senator Healy Eames and her proposers, is that the solution lies with the banks. The Government can do all it wants to do. It can abolish this but ultimately it is about the relationship between the mortgage holder and the bank. It has been made quite clear that the banks have failed dismally to address this issue.

Notwithstanding the fact that I have opposed this measure, I would hope that with the withdrawal of several million euro from the banks that has been paid directly, as the Minister has repeatedly said, the banks will receive a wake-up call that will focus their minds. The banks have been happy to take this money over the past number of years without seeming to do anything about it. They seem to be happy just to take the money and let the mortgage holder continue to drift along. There has been no reduction in the principal, which has remained the same. There would, therefore, seem to be a moral imperative on the part of the banks aside from a practical one to do something about this once this measure is put in place.

That is why I put down this amendment in line with the FLAC and NCLC submission. It is worded in such a way that it gives the Minister some wriggle room in that it asks her to lay before each House as soon as is practicable a report detailing the implications of the retention of mortgage interest supplement at least until the Central Bank can produce satisfactory evidence that lenders have sustainable strategies to maintain people in their homes without the need for the supplement. That has been absent in the relationship between the mortgage holder and the banks up to now, particularly those in receipt of mortgage interest supplement. That is why it is long past time the Government as the major stakeholder in one pillar bank and the owner of a 15% stake in Bank of Ireland called those banks to account. They appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service and did not really cover themselves in glory. They obfuscated and created smokescreens. Even the best brains of the committee seem to have been thwarted in their efforts to get them to take some action in this regard. That is the reason for and the context of this amendment.