Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Governor about the mortgage issue which, it is fair to say, is the one that concerns the committee most today, and this issue of the delayed economic recovery that those under mortgage arrears are contributing to because of their failure to participate in the real economy. Much has been said previously about Ms Muldoon's comments and the Central Bank has, in the making, a poster girl for those in mortgage arrears. Are her contributions equally possible to be interpreted as an implicit criticism of the Central Bank because she makes reference to words being misplaced for actions, etc? Is she implicitly critical of the Central Bank in so far as it has failed to recognise that banks do not change their spots in the sense that they are resolutely pursuing persons who do not have the capacity to pay? Has the Central Bank done any modelling on the upside for banks of dealing with this issue in the sense of the release into the economy of moneys that are currently not being spent? I refer to those who need to change a car, redecorate a house and, perhaps, even to go out to eat, the spending in the economy that such activity would unleash and the upside in that respect for the banks.

My second question is on the issue of banking supervision and the new regime being introduced. In the context of this change, has the Governor given any consideration to changing the Statute of Limitations in so far as it enables customers and clients of banks who may have been mis-sold products - there is a case which has some currency at present in the Irish banking system - who, because it was unclear that the product that they had purchased was mis-sold to them, are now statute barred from getting involved in a case? There is the ultimate irony where some, with the benefit of good legal advice, have benefited from pursuing that bank but others are locked outside by virtue of the Statute of Limitations.

Reference has been made to the possibility of exiting the bailout agreement, but I wish to ask in respect of the desirability of it from the point of view of the affordable funding at low interest that the troika makes available to us relative to the cost of self-financing on the international markets given current interest rates.