Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Jim Walsh's proposal for a Minister or a Minister of State solely responsible for pensions. This is a time bomb. We have some time, but we need to start to plan because the demographics speak for themselves, as the Senator said.

The time bomb about which I wish to speak and which I mentioned yesterday is home repossessions. We know from the banks, the representatives of which attended the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform last week, that thousands of home repossessions are imminent. One's second highest right after the right to life is the right to property. Currently, the Government provides €250 for a person in difficulty to visit an accountant. I have been talking to MABS, the staff of which essentially are accountants, and its service is free. It would be better if the €250 was given to a legal person, a solicitor, because people are worn down as a result of having to deal with huge difficulties, for which we all know the reasons. Many of them are in difficulty not because of anything they have done but because of the recession, job cuts or perhaps a family illness and they need legal advice. Let us not disable them anymore. I would like the Leader to convey my recommendation to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, that the €250 being provided for accounting advice be provided for a solicitor to advise before people relinquish their family homes, if they have to do so. We must protect the people concerned. We need the Minister to come to the House to consider more creative solutions to enable people to hold on to their family homes rather than have them repossessed. If that means the State has to take an equity stake in the family home to allow a family to rent at local authority rent rates, let us do it. We know there is a housing crisis; therefore, what is the point in putting the people in question, for whom we cannot find homes, out on the street and having them draw rent allowance? I will continue to raise this issue until we find a solution because to lose one's home is the last straw for a family. It causes stress for everybody, including children. One cannot parent properly when one has to endure such stress in one's life.