Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The number of buy-to-let individuals must be much smaller than the number of owner-occupiers. It points to an extraordinary level of lending for speculative purposes when these loans were being given out. However, I will move on.

During the housing bubble, the orgy of speculation and profiteering indulged in by banks, bondholders and developers, with the connivance of establishment politicians, left a whole tranche of young working people with massive, negative equity mortgages that are wholly unsustainable. That is the background. In view of the massive State assistance AIB has received, has the bank written down to today's values the capital loaned during the bubble for individual house owners and, accordingly, calibrated downwards the monthly payments?