Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Personally speaking, those ratios are not a straightforward and robust way of looking at things. We should look at the maturity of the assets and at how easily they may be collected on. As mentioned, many of them are 35-year assets. The likelihood is that the borrowers are not in a position, based on their current, prospective and sustainable earnings, to repay their loans, whether businesses or individuals.

I would like to draw attention to the tracker element of loans. The mortgage book involves loans of a total of €27 billion. Domestic tracker loans make up 57%, €20.5 billion, and investment trackers make up 81% of a total of €6.7 billion. Tracker loans are very expensive for the bank to carry. Yesterday, we discussed the point that if average interest rates, at 4% on the standard variable and non-tracker loans, rose to 6%, that would be a 50% increase, but borrowers are only barely hanging in as matters stand - after restructuring, continuing on interest only loans, stretching out the loan or other strategies or non-appropriate restructuring. This means the bank is in a perilous position on €27 billion worth of loans. It is not impressive.