Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Appropriation Accounts and Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 6 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Financial Outturn for 2011
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 3 - Banking and Insurance Measures
Chapter 5 - EU Financial Transactions

11:00 am

Mr. John Moran:

It is in the greater than 90 days, which would include the other category as well.

In terms of monitoring these, we have seen significant attention given by banks in the last couple of months to the collection process. The first priority for the banks had to be to identify the risk at the beginning of the process. The risk is that if somebody stays in arrears for too long, without having it dealt with, in effect the problem gets worse rather than better. Therefore we have encouraged them to try to work particularly hard on the zero to 90 day bucket, so that we can see an effective reduction there, which stems the flow of significant new mortgages getting into arrears problems. In doing so, it will more actively - than was the case beforehand - focus on the financial statements that come in from customers to understand those customers who are genuinely able to pay their mortgages, and should be doing so, but are taking advantage of the hiatus. There are also those who are suffering a temporary shock to their system, for example, a loss of employment of one or both members of the household, which means that one has to find a temporary solution pending their resumption of employment. In addition, there are those who have much more deeply embedded problems. For example, they may be in the construction sector where incomes tended to be high and by moving back into employment they may find themselves in a lower income bracket and therefore the mortgage is unsustainable.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.