Yesterday was just like every other day for thousands of families struggling with mortgage distress. Some are facing eviction like the family in Kanturk in County Cork. There are many others who will be facing the same scenario. Yesterday was also the day that the Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Patrick Honohan, appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. That meeting had a sense of the extraordinary about it. We know rightly that the public was scandalised when the Anglo Irish Bank tapes first emerged in the media. We heard at first hand the moolah men describe how they picked figures from their posteriors and how they were going down to the Central Bank arms swinging demanding a multi-billion euro bailout. Yet Professor Honohan, who is Governor of the Central Bank and the regulator, tells us that it will not forward any more information on these tapes to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement or the Garda Professor Honohan then told us that neither he nor his staff have even listened to the tapes in his possession and indicated that he was not minded to do so.

Is this not incredible? On the one hand, distressed mortgage holder face arrears, possible negative equity, stress, legal letters from the banks and court appearances in many cases. Yet it seems the bankers remain untouchable. Heads, they win and tails, they win. Is the Minister satisfied with the manner in which the Central Bank and its Governor have handled the Anglo Irish Bank tapes affair?

The Deputy first raised the issue of mortgage arrears in the context of the discussion that took place yesterday between Professor Honohan and the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. Before I go on to the second question, I want to say that the issue of mortgage arrears is an absolute focus of Government because it is one of the deepest scars of the legacy of the collapse of the Celtic tiger. Many people are struggling desperately in mortgage arrears.

How much worse has it got in the past two years?

Deputy O'Dea has a brass neck.

Could we go through the Chair please?

I will not be distracted because the issue of mortgage arrears is too important and central to the lives of too many people for Deputy O'Dea to be making silly comments about it. He should be ashamed of his part in it. The Government has put in place a comprehensive programme of action to assist mortgage holders. The Personal Insolvency Act was signed into law last December. The Insolvency Service of Ireland has begun taking applications from 9 September. The Central Bank has set targets requiring the main mortgage lenders to offer durable solutions and has launched a framework for a pilot approach. We can give a comprehensive focus on that because we are determined that this issue will be resolved and resolved it will be. It will take time and is very complex.

In respect of the question about bankers and the Anglo Irish Bank tapes, every member of this Government and every elected Member on this side of the House was as shocked and, bluntly, as nauseated listening to those tapes as the general public was. It was characteristic of the attitude that prevailed in banking at the time. I believe it has substantially changed but there needs to be an accounting. However, I will not say anything here that would lessen the prospect of people who have verged over the edge of criminality being held accountable before the courts. The prosecution services of this State, which are entirely independent of the Government, as is right, have been working assiduously gathering the information and we all expect that there will be a conclusion that will hold people to account.

If that obnoxious, macho attitude was characteristic of the bankers and, let's face it, the system including the political system of the time, it would also be fair to say that what is characteristic of the system today is a "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" approach to mortgage distress. The Government is happy that progress is being made and the Minister stands up and gives his answer by rote. I have heard it before from his colleague, the Tánaiste. The Governor of the Central Bank comes to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and surprise, surprise, he sings the same song. Meanwhile back in the real world, people are still under the most enormous stress and they do not see a willingness to act and for accountability on the part of the system. They do not see those within the banking sector being held to account.

I am not asking the Minister to make comments or draw conclusions in the Dáil or elsewhere around criminal culpability in anything. I am asking him whether, when the regulator of the banks has in his possession tapes pertaining to Anglo Irish Bank, some of them become public and it appears or there is even a suggestion that there has been a ruse to fool or even defraud the State, it is not appropriate for the regulator of the bank to make sure all of the tapes are listened and scrutinised to make absolutely sure that information and material is passed on to the relevant authority? I would have thought that this was the most basic requirement of somebody who would claim to be a regulator. I am not asking the Minister to make a comment on criminal culpability because he should not do that. I am asking him on behalf on the Government to say in this Chamber that it is not appropriate for the Governor to sit on his hands, that the material in his possession must be examined fully and that the outcome and materials should be passed on to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and An Garda Síochána to allow them to draw any appropriate conclusions. Let us not add to the public distress created by the system by yet again looking away from those who must be held accountable and punishing the people.

The people of Ireland are hurting and are rightly angry. They want an accounting not some denunciation from the benches here. They want a real accounting. Those who committed criminal offences should be held to account under the law. We changed the law shortly after coming into Government to give additional powers to the prosecution authorities. I am confident that every shred of evidence they require - they are very competent people - will be available to them. They have the power to acquire it and I have every confidence that this is exactly what they have done.

I remind the Deputy that we operate courts of law under the Constitution, not courts martial. I know there are those who are more used to summary justice. We are interested in ensuring the slow, painstaking and difficult task of giving every assistance to the prosecution authorities to ensure that where there is any criminality, those people are held to account and that we do not do anything that would give any shield or comfort to people who may have committed a criminal act and allow them to escape accountability.

That is what will happen under this Administration.