Mr. Barry O'Leary:

In response to the question on local authority borrowers' arrears, we are not completely divorced from the knowledge of the difficulties for the local authorities. I am aware that the Department has encouraged local authorities to put together a mortgage arrears resolution fund, so 0.55% of the interest charged on all these loans is being put into a fund which will allow local authorities develop the very solutions the Senator mentioned and that commercial banks are supposed to be developing for their customers. They are actively working on a mortgage arrears resolution process, MARP, solution for their borrowers. We are not unaware that if they were to run into financial difficulties, they could have cashflow issues in terms of paying us, but happily we have no arrears at the moment. We have indicated to all local authorities that in the event of them having any cashflow issues where the receipts coming in from their borrowers are less than what they would require to borrow from us, we would look at some of our own cashflow mirroring and we would adjust the term and we would give them payment holidays or whatever. No local authority has approached us so far about this, but it is in their armoury if they need it to address the process. The MARP process is particularly important as it will be developed in the next two or three years. As people emerge from the MARP process, solutions such as split mortgages or mortgage-to-rent or any other solutions used in the commercial sector will also be applied to local authority borrowers.