I support the call made by Senator Mary Ann O'Brien for a debate on town and village centres. A pop-up policy has been put in place in Carlow which looks at encouraging enterprises to take up opportunities in vacant properties. It is a pilot scheme and is worthy of debate.

I call for a debate on the whole issue of public and private debt, the significant issue which has not been sorted out in Europe. Our European and this State's leaders simply have not learned the lessons of the real reason this country is in crisis. We have a huge mountain of banking debt that was taken on by this State. We also have significant levels of personal debt with families in mortgage arrears and having other loans they cannot service. Since the Government came into office, we now have twice as many people, some 185,000, in mortgage distress with 1,000 families every month falling into mortgage arrears. Of that 185,000, according to the Central Bank, up to 145,000 will not be able to pay their mortgages now or into the future unless their circumstances change. The bottom line is that as long as a family or an individual is servicing debts they cannot repay, then the economy will not be able to grow and the family's or individual's circumstances will not change. Unless we have a write-down of the private banking debt, taking it off the shoulders of the taxpayers and a restructuring of domestic mortgages to include a suite of interventions including mortgage write-downs, families will not be able to get out of the dire circumstances in which they find themselves and, accordingly, spend. So far the Government has not put in place any tangible proposals to help people in mortgage distress. The Government's latest initiative is to set targets for the banks to deal with mortgage resolution but the banks will retain a veto and can simply disregard the targets as they have done in the past.

I am calling for a debate on the whole issue of debt.

There is a need for the Government and the European Union to get serious about the real problems which are bearing down on ordinary working people, including the unsustainable levels of private and personal debt.

I take the opportunity to congratulate St. Brigid's GAA club in County Roscommon on going down in history as the first team from the county to win the all-Ireland club final.

En route in the Connacht final they beat my home team of Ballaghaderreen. It is great that there are two teams in County Roscommon playing at such a high level in all-Ireland leagues. Fair play to Shane Curran, Frankie Dolan, Senan Kilbride and the rest of the lads. I am delighted for them and we are all proud of them.

I support the call made by Senator Mary Ann O'Brien on the regeneration of town centres. I raised this issue with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Phil Hogan, at the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation three weeks ago when I suggested we needed to provide incentives, as town centres were dying. Senator Mary Ann O'Brien has rightly pointed out that all we see are bookmakers and charity shops, with the greatest of respect to them, opening in town centres. The reason town centres are dying is purely the bad planning of the past.

I listened to the media coverage during the weekend and on the way here in the car today about the chief executive of Bank of Ireland who is on €900,000 a year. Have we not learned anything at this stage? It was absolutely outrageous to listen to the debate and hear that he was on that kind of money. When I switched to another channel, I had to listen to a girl who had gone to see to a community welfare officer this morning. She is a qualified health professional who, because of illness, has had to give up work. Her husband was self-employed, but his business went to the wall. They have lost their home and are surviving on social welfare payments. They do not have the price of a pair of shoes for their children. It is chalk and cheese. There is no problem in looking after those who are running the banks with losses of €2 billion a year, but we are doing nothing for people at the lower end of the scale who have absolutely nothing. It is time the Ministers in question looked up and smelled the coffee.