Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Chathaoirleach as an deis labhairt ar an mBille seo. I welcome and acknowledge the Minister of State. This Bill will bring legal clarity and end the ambiguities in the Personal Insolvency Act 2012. Fianna Fáil welcomes that aspect of this Bill and we will not delay its passage through the House. However, this legislation is nothing short of a missed opportunity for dealing with the tsunami of personal debt, both secured and unsecured, which cripples many families throughout the country.

The 2012 Act and the Insolvency Service of Ireland, have done nothing to deal with the issue of personal debt that cripples this country. For example, only 1,000 debt solutions have been approved since the legislation was initiated in 2013. This number comprises 547 alternatives to bankruptcy and 448 bankruptcy cases. This is in stark contrast to what the then Minister, Deputy Shatter, said in this House when he was overseeing the passage of the legislation. He stated that in the first full year of the legislation's operation, there would be approximately 21,000 applications for debt resolution. What has gone wrong? There has been less than 5% of that level. What has happened? Has the matter been reviewed by the Department of Justice and Equality? Was the then Minister, Deputy Shatter, wrong back then or is it the case that all debts have dramatically disappeared just like in Alice in Wonderland? The reality is that the debts have not disappeared and they remain burdensome for individuals and families throughout the country. The legislation has not worked. Perhaps the Minister of State would clarify now or on Committee Stage what reviews have been carried out by the Department. Why has the legislation failed? Why has there been so little of a take-up by individuals applying for relief or reliefs being granted? Will the Minister of State have a look at the situation and to reply to me next week?

The 2012 Act has done nothing or very little. Personal debt is a massive issue in the country. The Minister of State acknowledged this in his reference to the more than 100,000 cases of mortgage arrears of three months or more. In fact, the number is 117,000 cases of arrears, totalling €8 billion in mortgage finance, with €2.3 billion outstanding. A total of 37,484 people have arrears of two or more years, amounting to €1.8 billion. The Central Statistics Office confirms that Ireland has the highest household indebtedness in the European Union. This is a crisis and it is crippling our country and preventing it from moving forward. The Government is adopting a sticking plaster approach. It is giving the impression that something is being done but, in reality, nothing is being done for the people. The mortgage misery and the personal debt misery continue. There are people who cannot sleep at night. I have met such people, as have other Members.

A personal friend of mine lives in the Minister of State's constituency and he has told me he has contemplated suicide because of the indebtedness he faces. He continues to pay what he can to the bank. The bank is putting so much pressure on this individual that he cannot sleep at night and he is contemplating suicide. It is disgraceful that banks have been given a veto over this legislation. They have been given all the cards, they can call the shots and the Department of Finance and the Government are standing idly by and not protecting the country's citizens. I acknowledge that individuals can go to the courts but very few can afford to go to the courts. The plcs facing examinership and indebtedness can go to the courts but individuals, including the directors of small companies, retail businesses and family hotels, do not have the resources to defend themselves in court. The banks have all the resources, all the skills, as well as the economic wherewithal.They had that prior to the crash when they gave out mortgages to the cohort of people aged between 35 and 60 who now find themselves in negative equity and facing mortgage arrears. They are Ireland's lost generation because they cannot move forward. They are stagnant on a road. They are at crossroads, they cannot go east, west, north or south because they have a major debt hanging over their heads. They are the people who could drive Ireland into economic recovery but they are not being given the opportunity to do that. Many of them are from our generation and they are, effectively, a lost generation to this country.

Many of them took out mortgages and other loans during the period 2000 to 2008. They did not foresee the tsunami that was going to happen ahead of the collapse in property prices but the banks should have foreseen it because they had the best brains and skills to foresee what was happening down the road, yet there is no burden-sharing of responsibility in regard to the debt situation. All the debts are being hounded from the debtors, those individuals who took out mortgages, but they only took them out and obtained the credit because the banks were willing to give it at a time when they knew that they should not have been doing that. Any policy in this area has to be impose culpability on the financial institutions but of course that was not convenient for the Government because it wanted to restore the balance sheets of the State funded banks, AIB, Bank of Ireland the other institutions. We see now that every time property prices increase by 20% AIB makes about €20 million across the country on its mortgage book.

The banks say that they are coming back to profitability but they are doing so because property prices are increasing and not because they are trying to obtain lasting restructured solutions that would allow people to stay in their own homes and businesses and work their way out of their debt. People need space and the banks are not willing to give them that. They are hounding people. All the cards are being given to the banks. Notwithstanding what the Minister is trying to achieve with this legislation, and we will not be opposing it, it is a missed opportunity. We need to know why it is not working. Research was carried out by MRBI which showed that people do not want to avail of this service because they do not have the confidence in the Insolvency Service of Ireland, ISI, or in the structures that are in place. There is a need to review this and to re-evaluate it. Something needs to happen quickly because, like the man that I met this week, we will see further fatalities of people who find themselves in a corner, in a dark place, to which they have been hounded by our financial institutions, which were bailed out by the taxpayer. Those institutions and the individuals at the head of them are a disgrace to our Republic as we approach 2016.