Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Members of this House raise issues of concern but it is also important to raise good news stories. I refer to the CSO figures which have just been released and which show the highest ever number of people working in this country, at 2.28 million, with the number of additional jobs created in the past 12 months standing at 50,500. Some 48,000 of the latter are full-time jobs. This means that over 1,000 jobs were created each week in 2018 and that is a good news story. It is as a result of having stability, good leadership and making it attractive for businesses to establish and grow here.That is extremely important. It is also important that we have access to export markets. We will face many challenges in that regard in the coming months in the context of Brexit. I hope we will find a satisfactory solution to the latter.

I wish raise another matter which came to my attention recently. It concerns various people who have had a very difficult time in terms of housing in recent years. I am talking about people who had to sell their homes because they ended up in negative equity as a result of losing their jobs. In some families, both the husband and wife, or both partners, may have lost jobs. It could also be the case that couples separated. I am finding that they are back on their feet and are on good money but none of the banks will lend to them because they ran into difficulties previously. I am also finding that they are not entitled to apply for local authority loans because they have already owned houses. The regulation in that regard needs to be amended. People should not be penalised for the rest of their lives for something they did not cause. They happened to be in a difficult situation at the time, which they had no hand, act or part in creating, and I do not believe they should be penalised for the rest of their lives for that. This is an issue we should bring to the Minister's attention. He should come to the House to deal with it and to consider the changes that need to be made in the regulations in order to ensure that people who are now back on their feet and want to buy again are entitled to apply for local authority loans, thereby ensuring that they can have homes of their own again.