It is fair to say the two biggest problems facing many households are unemployment and problems with mortgages and personal debt. What we have seen is a fiasco of a jobs initiative and the unemployment figures as bad as ever. On mortgage debt, nothing is happening. We left behind us——
Leaders’ Questions
A bankrupt country.
Deputy Ó Cuív, without interruption.
If I was the Deputy, I would not refer to what he left behind.
A total mess.
The IMF.
They left behind the ECB and the IMF.
——the Cooney report. The Government knew the situation and it took on the job. To be quite honest, those who have distressed mortgages today do not want history lessons; they want solutions from this Government.
They want to forget to history over there all right.
I left behind me in the Department a set of actions the Minister for Social Protection could have implemented in the spring to help people with distressed mortgages by improving the mortgage interest supplement.
Fianna Fáil left a hole in the budget.
They left the country in receivership.
What did they get from the Government?
Leadership.
Instead of acting on the report that was there, it parked it and set up the Keane group. That group reported and what did we get then? Another working group to look at the issue all over again.
Another quango.
Eight weeks after the Keane report was published, what do we find in the EU-IMF report? That some time next year, at the end of March, the Government will publish an insolvency Bill. It will then have to bring it through the Houses and will then have to implement it.
Fianna Fáil did not publish one in 14 years.
I beg the Deputy's pardon but we did.
Can we have a question?
Deputy Ó Cuív should seek an Academy Award for this performance.
Would Members please allow the Deputy to make his point?
We published it in the last few weeks but obviously the Labour Party was not listening.
Tax breaks for developers, that is what Fianna Fáil put in place.
It was Deputy Ruairí Quinn who devised those for the Labour Party.
Fianna Fáil made it an art form.
Tax breaks in the middle of the country, remember those?
More advice for people with financial difficulties does not solve anything because if they do not have the money to pay, all the advice in the world will not solve the problem. I ask the Government today to spell out the exact actions it will implement to help people with distressed mortgages to pay those mortgages. I ask the Tánaiste to explain how, in all the leaks we are getting, there has been no mention of dealing with this issue, which is paramount for ordinary people who are trying to struggle from day to day.
Deputy Ó Cuív did leave a lot of things behind. He left behind a broken country, broken public finances and broken morale.
This Government knows about broken promises — many broken promises.
Now, Mattie.
Mattie never supported that.
Mattie left the sinking ship.
He also left behind a lot of people who are in mortgage distress and, as he said, he left behind the Cooney report. That report, as the Deputy knows and as we discovered, was not sufficient to deal with the mortgage difficulties people are facing. That is why the new Government asked the Keane group to bring forward a new set of recommendations as to what needed to be done to address the mortgage difficulties facing people. We brought the Keane report into this House to hear the words of wisdom from Deputy Ó Cuív and other Deputies who wanted to contribute on the issue and to offer either added solutions or alternative solutions. All of that is now being considered by the Government and we are bringing forward proposals that will be considered by Government within the next couple of weeks. They will include measures such as mortgage-to-rent schemes and work being done by the Minister for Justice and Equality in introducing a personal insolvency Bill, and they will bring forward a range of measures that will provide practical solutions to people who are in mortgage difficulty, all things the Fianna Fáil-Green Government failed to do over the period it was in office.
There were a lot of good things in the Cooney report. One simple change would have helped a lot of people, namely, to have abolished the 30 hour rule where if a two income family becomes a one income family and that person works more than 30 hours a week, they cannot get mortgage interest supplement. We made other constructive changes to mortgage interest supplement which could have been done and more could have been done to build on that. The Government did N-O-T-H-I-N-G — nothing — in the meantime.
Deputy Ó Cuív was Minister for three years.
The Government, rather than dealing with the issue in a practical way to enable people to pay their mortgages, seems to be saying they have to hand over their houses to the banks and rent them back.
They would not be in a mess only for Fianna Fáil in the first place.
Could the Deputy not read the script from the press office a bit better than that?
That is what Fianna Fáil did.
Obviously this is hitting home with the Government.
For three years I was trying to address that same subject on that side of the House and for three years the Government did nothing.
The second solution the Government is offering is bankruptcy proceedings.
The Deputy has not learned that when he is in a hole he should stop digging.
Most ordinary people just want a way to be able to pay their mortgage and hold on to their house. What is the Government going to do about that to ensure that people who are temporarily unemployed are able to resolve the issue so that they will not have to give up their house and will not have to go into bankruptcy?
There were some good recommendations in the Cooney report. I said the Cooney report was not sufficient to deal with the range of difficulties that people in mortgage distress have had. Let us not forget they are in mortgage distress because of the difficulties Deputy Ó Cuív and his colleagues put them in. This Government is dealing with that issue. We had the Keane group look at the issue and following publication of the group's report, we have had a round of consultation with people who are interested and active in the area of providing support to people in mortgage distress. We have heard what Members of this House had to say about additional or further measures that could be taken. Those are being worked on. The issue is before the Government and this Government is clear in its approach to the mortgage issue. We want to ensure people will not lose their homes in this crisis. We are determined to take the steps necessary to ensure that happens. There are numerous recommendations, both in the Keane report and additional matters, that have been discussed here and elsewhere that we are going to progress. The objective is that people will be able to remain living in their own homes.
Owned by somebody else.
The Deputy should bear with me. This recession will not last forever, because of the way in which the Government is dealing with it and getting the country out of the hole Deputy Ó Cuív's party put it in. While we are doing that, many families will have difficulty paying their mortgages. They are in mortgage distress and we will ensure, in so far as it is possible, that they will not be put out of their homes and will receive the kind of support necessary to ensure their mortgage distress is dealt with. The Government is considering what has been said here and the advice it received from the various groups and organisations it met since the publication of the Keane report. It will announce its measures when it has made final decisions.
It would appear from the leaks——
I ask Deputy Ó Cuív to resume his seat.
——from the Minister for Social Protection that the Government's only direction is to take the mortgage interest supplement away from those who have it. To be quite honest, its only policy is: "Mair, a chapaill, agus gheobhair féar." It has no other policy.
I ask Deputy Ó Cuív to resume his seat.
That is all the Government is offering.
(Interruptions).
That was all very convincing.
Yesterday the Taoiseach promised he would make an honest man of the Tánaiste. Some would say he will have his work cut out for him given the number——
A Deputy
What about Gerry?
——of promises the Labour Party has broken since entering office. Before the election, the party was crystal clear. It promised not to cut child benefit, introduce student fees or increase the registration charge. It even attacked its buddies in Fine Gael for proposing a 2% increase in VAT, a tax which, as we all know, will hit the poorest hardest. In spite of adopting these positions, the Labour Party has U-turned.
Sinn Féin U-turned on the bank guarantee.
That is well recorded. The Tánaiste also promised an end to cronyism——
Sinn Féin went from robbing the banks to bailing them out.
The Labour Party promised an end to big pensions and salaries.
Sinn Féin robbed the banks and it robbed the people.
It promised to protect the poor and to bring accountability to the top. It is in this critical test that the Government had its greatest failure. We saw yesterday that its proposed nominee to the European Court of Auditors has been rejected by a European Parliament committee. The Tánaiste should not have proceeded with that nomination and should now withdraw it. He should realise that the days in which a Government can remove or reward officials by automatically promoting them to top jobs in Europe need to be left behind.
I remind the Deputy that we do not speak about people who are not present to defend themselves.
I have mentioned no name.
We need accountability at the top. I ask the Tánaiste whether he will recognise and accept this reality belatedly by withdrawing the nomination.
I am not quite sure which of the many accusations Deputy McDonald levelled is the question. I will not take any lecture on honesty from Sinn Féin.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
This Government promised——
(Interruptions).
Has Deputy Ferris forgotten? Captain Nemo.
(Interruptions).
Did you sign out, Brendan?
I ask the Tánaiste to proceed. There is a time limit on these questions.
This Government promised that it would get the country out of the economic hole in which it found itself. The country was broken when we entered Government on 9 March last. There were broken banks, broken public finances, a broken reputation and broken morale.
Broken promises.
We have worked every day to fix these problems. This is not the first time on which Deputy McDonald has accused the Government in the House of breaking promises. She claimed in the House that we broke our promise on restoring the minimum wage; she was wrong about that. She stated we would not renegotiate the deal with the European Union and IMF; she was wrong about that. She stated in the House we would not get the 1% reduction in the interest rate.
Greece.
She was wrong about that because we got a reduction of 2.5%, at a value of €10 billion to the country. Her accusation today that we have not delivered on political reform is also wrong. We cut the pay of Ministers, made cuts regarding the transport arrangements of Ministers and capped the salaries of public servants. We have changed the pension arrangements for top-level public servants and the arrangements for the appointment of top-level civil servants through changes in the TLAC system. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform announced last week the most comprehensive set of public service reforms we have seen in this country. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald was wrong about that too.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
On none of those issues has Deputy McDonald or anybody else making the aforementioned accusations admitted she was wrong. She will have to admit she was wrong in respect of some of the other allegations she levelled today.
Regarding the nominee to the European Court of Auditors, we were surprised by the vote taken at the committee meeting yesterday. We understand it did not reflect the discussion at the meeting. Mr. Cardiff is the Government's nominee. That remains the position and, as I understand it, a report from the committee will be considered at a plenary session of the European Parliament, at which session a decision will be made.
If we are to understand the Tánaiste, despite his bluster and rhetoric——
(Interruptions).
If the Deputies do not mind——
We do mind.
This is my opportunity to speak without interruption.
Deputy McDonald without interruption, please.
The Tánaiste's Government is the one that broke its own guidelines on capping pay for its special advisers. That is on the record. His Government still allows senior civil servants to walk away with bonanza pension pots. His Government, and he in particular, gets very rattled at the very prospect that a senior civil servant might be called to account in this Dáil. He claims his nominee remains the Government's nominee. That is not a credible position given the view taken by the budgetary committee in the European Parliament. More important, it is not a credible position on the part of a Government that proposes to introduce, in the short term, swingeing cuts affecting people on low and middle incomes.
Could we have the Deputy's question now, please?
I ask the Tánaiste again whether he will pull the plug on the nomination. Will he live up to his promise of accountability within the public service? Will he allow the public to be confident that, at last, the political system will have one rule and one standard for all the people and not cosset those at the very top?
There is one rule that this Government applies, and it applies equally to everybody. That is why, from the very beginning of this Administration, we took unprecedented steps to cap the salaries of senior public servants and staff in the semi-State sector and to change the inherited arrangements pertaining to pensions and severance deals. From the very beginning of the life of the Government we took steps which had not been taken previously to cap the pay of senior public servants and others in the semi-State sector and change the arrangements we had inherited in regard to pensions and severance deals.
That was done by Fianna Fáil.
The Deputy keeps saying these things.
They were paid off.
The Tánaiste to continue, without interruption.
Of course, we did. It was the law.
They have been done by the Government. There is a rule regarding accountability, whereby people are called to account, but they are also given the opportunity to answer for themselves. I do not know if it is part of the culture of Sinn Féin——
Like hell it is.
——but it is something Deputy McDonald appears to find difficult to understand.
The individual in question was given an opportunity to defend himself in committee.
Play the man, not the ball.
If one makes an accusation against somebody——
What about a former Ceann Comhairle?
——one gives him or her an opportunity to respond.
That is something we do here.
It is something we do in committees of the House.
We did that.
In regard to the nominee to the European Court of Auditors, a hearing took place yesterday at a budgetary committee of the European Parliament. I understand the nominee gave a strong performance.
What did Nessa Childers think?
A vote was taken, but, according to the reports I have received, it did not appear to reflect the tone and content of the discussion that had taken place.
They rejected him.
I do not know why that was. It is something we will have to consider. It is not unusual that committees take a vote. I understand the committee will make a report to the Parliament in plenary session. That report has not yet been made.
The Tánaiste should listen to himself.
When it is made, the Parliament will make a decision in plenary session.
The Taoiseach certainly has his work cut out for him.
I hope he shows more regard for the committees of the European Parliament than he does for this House.
Seven out of eight nominees got through yesterday; only one was rejected. Whatever way one looks at it, this result is a humiliation not only for the candidate but also for the Government and the country. My question will give the Tánaiste an opportunity to respond to the comments made by the Taoiseach in the House yesterday. In the Tánaiste's absence, the Taoiseach commented on what had happened on the night of the bank guarantee, as he is wont to do when engaged in parliamentary battle with Fianna Fáil Members. It was a fair point and the Tánaiste himself took an honourable position of opposition to the guarantee. How could the Government nominate the sole survivor of the events of that shameful night? The bankers, the politicians and the other advisers involved have gone. The one person who survived and was part of the cabal in Merrion Street was nominated for promotion. I do not understand why this happened.
I can only suggest what has happened is a humiliation for the Taoiseach, although not as much for the Tánaiste. The Taoiseach is reported to have contacted his colleagues in the European People's Party to ask them to vote for the candidate in question. In response they were unanimous in giving two fingers to the Taoiseach. It is a humiliation for Ireland and begs the question of whether the genuflection in which the Taoiseach has been indulging has been wasted on the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy. Mrs. Merkel is allied to the EPP.
Tears on the floor.
Has the goodwill we are supposed to have engendered in the European Union as a result of being a poster boy been lost? Are they just kicking us in the teeth?
Deputy Ross's description of what happened on the night of the bank guarantee is very colourful and it may have been a cabal. However, we have an independent Civil Service, an independence I respect. It is not right to come into the House and accuse an independent civil servant of being part of a cabal. The Government in office at the time took a political decision for which it was politically responsible. Certain Members voted in favour of that decision in the House — others voted against it — for which they will have to take political responsibility. Until such time as we change our system we will have an independent Civil Service which has been a cornerstone of the way we do business in this country and we will abandon it at our peril. However unpopular it may be today or any other day for me to defend the independence of the Civil Service, I will continue to do so. The Government nominated a senior civil servant for appointment to the European Court of Auditors and he presented to the budgetary committee yesterday. I did not follow the exchanges, but I understand that, by and large, the reaction was positive.
What about the vote?
A vote was taken. It was a secret ballot. It is something we have to consider.
So much for being positive.
In many cases, votes taken at committees of the European Parliament are overturned in plenary session. We will have to await the formal report from the committee to the European Parliament, but in the meantime I ask Deputy Ross to respect the fact that our civil servants operate independently of the Government. Under our system, civil servants are not permitted to speak publicly in their own defence or about matters on which they give advice to the Government. This is an important point to make. If Deputies want to change this to a system under which Secretaries General would be allowed to make public statements on the advice they give to the Government or become part of the political process, let us have that debate. It is a matter for the House to decide and if the Deputy wants to introduce a Private Members' Bill to change the current system, he should do so and we will debate it. Until we introduce such a change, however, I ask him to have some respect for the people we appoint to independently advise whatever Government happens to be in office.
I admire the Tánaiste for his rhetoric but not the content of his reply. It is absurd to try to quell debate on a nomination of this importance.
I am not trying to quell debate.
I will put my question directly to the Tánaiste because this was a Government appointment which he supported. Was the individual in question nominated by the Government because it wished to create a vacancy in the Department of Finance and it had a difficulty, or was he nominated because he had great talents which we wanted to export to the European Union?
I will tell the Deputy why he was nominated.
Go on.
There has been controversy about the appointment of nominees to the Court of Auditors. There was considerable public criticism of the fact that previous nominees were retired politicians. I do not know whether Deputy Ross was a party to that criticism.
We know he was.
He probably was. It was certainly commented on in the European institutions. The Government decided that, instead of appointing a former politician, somebody associated with politics or one of the political parties in government or another alternative that naturally would have brought criticism on us, it would appoint a senior civil servant who fitted the requirements of the post.
We decided to nominate the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, a senior civil servant who would serve as the Irish representative on the European Court of Auditors. That is why we made the decision.
Nobody believes the Tánaiste.
We did so because he was the most appropriate appointment. That decision stands——
You are a liar.
——and what happened yesterday was the first stage of a process which has some distance to go yet.