Mr. Stephen Mason:

I understand why the question keeps coming up, but the process is long. I do not have the criteria with me and they are part of the issue, but I will bring the Deputy briefly through the process from a couple of months ago and I do not believe it has changed. We see if a customer's position is unsustainable. We check against the qualifying criteria to see if the customer would meet them. They have to do with property value, size of property, household income, etc. It is then approved by Bank of Ireland management if we believe it meets the criteria; the mortgage is unsustainable and we see if we can it get into mortgage-for-rent sector. The case is anonymised and sent to the housing agency for approval. Without the customer's details, it looks to see if it meets the profile. That is the first part of the process.

Once approved as being eligible, the customer is contacted and advised. The mortgage-to-rent consent to participate letter and appropriate pack with relevant information and the next steps are sent to the customer. Part of the process allows the customer 60 days in which to lodge a social housing application with his or her local authority and return the signed consent to participate letter to the bank. Once the bank receives the social housing approval letter to proceed, it obtains consent from the customer and the customer's details are then forwarded to the relevant housing association. We issue our mortgage-to-rent letter. The customer has 28 days to obtain both legal and financial advice, for which we pay under the scheme, and return the signed copy indicating that he or she wants to participate. The voluntary surrender of the property by the customer to the bank takes place and the bank then sells the property to the housing association.

From that brief description of the process, the Deputy can see that many people are involved, that there are many hand-offs and that the criteria are restrictive. The whole thing needs to be looked at.