On the issue of the tracker mortgages, I am the Vice Chairman of the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. There are four Senators on the committee: Senators Conway-Walsh, O'Donnell, Paddy Burke and myself. The committee has done great work in the last number of weeks, particularly in exposing this issue and allowing people to come in and tell their personal stories. While I accept the point that committees do their own work and that we should let them get on with it, equally we have had statements in this Chamber on everything from flood prevention to Catalonia to the Irish language. We should ask the Leader to arrange statements on the tracker mortgage issue to allow the wider Seanad membership to contribute. We can make statements and ask questions of the Minister because it is a scandal. I am not going to go over the points that other Senators have made. People have lost their homes and their lives. Thousands of people have been affected. The banks are saying that everything is fine and that it will all be sorted. I believe 40 out of 3,500 have been sorted with Ulster Bank. There is still a lot of work to be done. It would be timely if the Leader could arrange for the Minister for Finance and for Public Expenditure and Reform to attend the House so that we can have a debate about this issue, which is so important for so many people.

I support Senator Horkan's proposal that there be a debate in this House on tracker mortgages. We need to expand that debate.

Of the 13,000 people affected, 3,300 have been repaid to date, while a further 7,000 plus need to be repaid post-haste. We need to look not only at tracker mortgages but also at the wider group of those impacted. We need to look at the mortgage interest rates being charged vis-à-vis those being charged elsewhere in Europe and whether we need to update the regulation of banks. There is a sense of déjà vu. The public is outraged. The issue has touched a raw nerve because in 2008, when the public was putting money into the same banks to rescue them, they were coercing people to go off tracker mortgages. In effect, they were expecting them to go out the back door and not to be able to come in the front door once the fixed rate had run its course. As a House, we need to make a firm statement. We should have statements on the issue with a view to looking not only at resolving the tracker mortgage issue but also the wider matter of regulation of banks in Ireland. The banks have gone native again and we cannot allow that to happen. This is something about which everyone feels strongly. We must have a functioning banking system, but we must also have a system that is fair to the consumer.