Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mar a deirtear, tá a lán uisce faoi thalamh mar gheall ar an t-ábhar seo. Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá i dtaobh Uisce Éireann. I welcome the fact that, according to reports, the Government has listened to the concerns of the people in this regard and we look forward to the announcement this afternoon. However, we will still be left with a structure that is inappropriate. We now see that many of the bad practices in Bord Gáis, which I and others spoke about here, were transferred to Uisce Éireann and that there will be a rear-guard action to try to preserve the bonuses, which is entirely wrong.

I hope that having taken on board what the people have said, the Government will in this instance look to other areas. For example, we all got letters about the property tax from the Revenue Commissioners recently stating that it is due on 1 January and must be paid by 21 March 2015. When we had rates, there were two moieties. People who want to pay in one lump sum rather than monthly, because they will pay interest or whatever on it, should be able to pay it in two moieties, one in March and one in September. All policies introduced should take into account the concerns of people and their ability to pay in these hard-pressed times.

In that regard, I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on hard-pressed working class people. I am talking about people on lower to middle incomes who are really finding it very difficult. More than 300,000 people have had to leave private health insurance, which really needs to be addressed. They are now being assaulted by the banks, which hard-pressed taxpayers' money was used to bail out, in order to extract excessive and exorbitant interest rates. The interest rates available to the banks have never been so low and yet margins are 3% to 3.5%, which is unacceptable. Something needs to be done in this regard.

I was appalled to hear the Tánaiste dismiss this and say it was a matter for the Central Bank when replying to Deputy Michael McGrath in the Dáil last week when he asked her what the Government was going to do. We were told the issue in regard to water charges was a matter for Uisce Éireann but when push came to shove, the Government intervened. I appeal to the Minister for Finance to come to the House and for us to put pressure on him to take action in this area. It is unacceptable. We must make accessing home ownership much more affordable and available to the majority of young people who have the same aspirations we had when we were younger when we could access home ownership. This is a big issue which needs to be discussed.