Just one in five homeowners facing eviction turns up in court for repossession hearings, according to the Tánaiste.

Joan Burton pleaded with borrowers to go to the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs) or to their lender "and seek to arrive at an agreement on the debt so they can stay in their own home".

She was responding to Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who accused her of giving only “tea and sympathy” rather than solutions to families facing eviction.

Ms McDonald warned of a “tsunami” of court cases and disaster for families across the State if the banks continued to “blatantly and brazenly refuse” to consider debt write-off.

“For tens of thousands of families this is about debt write-down. It is about writing off large portions of unsustainable mortgage debt,” Ms McDonald said.

She raised the issue following an Irish Times report which showed that last year 7,100 families had court proceedings lodged against them.

Some 4,500 eviction proceedings were lodged by the banks with the courts in the past nine months.

There have been 1,088 evictions in the first nine months of this year compared with 644 in 2014 and 240 in 2013, when legislation changed, facilitating more home repossession cases.

Tea and sympathy

The Sinn Féin TD said “people dealing with distressed families on a daily basis are saying that we are just seeing the beginning of the high point of this crisis”. Ms McDonald said the Minister was simply giving “tea and sympathy” but not sustainable solutions.

She asked Ms Burton: “Aside from the tea and sympathy when are you going to put the reins on the banks? When are you going to intervene and make sure that these families have some form of recovery and certainty?”

But the Tánaiste told the Dáil that only one in five borrowers turned up in court.

She said the number of cases lodged in court had fallen by 30 per cent.

Ms Burton told Ms McDonald: “If you’re interested in an actual solution the worst thing that can happen is that people deny that there is a problem.”

Mentoring system

She said Mabs had initiated a mentoring system so anyone going to court could have help and assistance in court. People could get Mabs advice and might not have to go to court at all “if we could get people to engage with the lender”.

But Ms McDonald suggested the Tánaiste was trying to shift the blame to it being the non-engagement of families that was causing the problem.

The banks “regard voluntary surrender or eviction as sustainable solutions” to mortgage distress”, she added.

“Hundreds more families are being coerced by the banks into selling their homes rather than facing the horror of court action.”

She said that in 2013 the Government enacted the Land and Conveyancing Act which made it easier for banks to successfully bring eviction proceedings.

Before the Act, banks had lodged between 50 and 100 court actions every month. After the Act became law the number exploded to between 500 and 1,000 a month.

Ms Burton said the Government was acutely conscious of the impact of debt on families and “our priority is and remains people remaining in their homes whenever this is possible”.

She said 90 to 100 of the cases are struck out or refused every month.

Studies showed that if people engaged with their lenders and the case ended up in court “the courts are routinely granting significant periods of adjournment to give the parties more time to reach agreement”.