Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

He has explained to me the personal circumstances of the Minister for Justice and Equality and his inability to bilocate on this occasion. The Leader has put this forward as a reason for the debate to be adjourned at 1.30 p.m. The consequence of this is that important issues will not be reached today which I had a significant personal interest in having read. However, I know the House is not run at my personal convenience.The age of digital consent is a very substantial issue and if and when this House gets to it, I will appeal to every Member in every group to think very carefully about its implications. It is a significant issue which cannot be dealt with superficially as it deals with the erosion of childhood. People say it is being done in the interests of children's rights, forgetting that parents and children are members of a family under the Constitution, with parents having obligations to protect their children, as well as the State. I hope Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and all the Independent and non-aligned groups will take the opportunity to look at the material which is now being circulated to see where they really stand on this issue before we make a major blunder.

I echo what the leader of the Fianna Fáil group said on the sale of non-performing home loans by a bank which is owned by the Irish State. I have seen at first hand, as a practising lawyer, the consequences of sales of personal indebtedness to vulture funds. A non-performing loan is where homeowners have got into difficulties and it may be culpable or non-culpable but banks who took the risk of lending them the money originally, taking the upside when it was all upside, are now selling those loans for a fraction of their nominal value, maybe 10 cent or 20 cent in the euro depending on the quality of the loans, to a group of people who will look for 100%.