Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When a person becomes unemployed, he or she applies to the Department of Social Protection for jobseeker's allowance or jobseeker's benefit, to the Health Service Executive for a medical card and, if he or she has a mortgage, to the bank to discuss repayment options. It is notable that such persons are obliged to provide much more information to the bank than to the Department or the HSE. I accept that this information retrieval is mandated by the Central Bank, but it seems to me to be superfluous. Would it not be better from the bank's point of view, in terms of administration, time and staff resources, simply to assume a certain level of expenditure? What I am suggesting here is that housing costs should not exceed a fixed portion of income. Would the banks prefer not to have to deal with the level of detail required in the standard financial statement? Would it be possible to operate a fair system with a more broad-based approach? If certain criteria were in place whereby housing costs could only account for a designated portion of income, much of the detail that is currently required could be bypassed and the whole process would work much more quickly. In addition, it would be less humiliating for the person in difficulty and would be in line with the type of information that is required by the Department of Social Protection and the HSE.