Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming to this meeting and sharing their knowledge of what is a very interesting topic, given Ireland's current situation. Deputy McGrath has teased out the costs, which was my first question, so I will ask two other questions about the practice in other countries. How much uptake is there for this type of product in, say, other European countries? For those who do take up the product, how many times is it called upon? In the Irish context, we already have banks with buckets of insurance policies against risk, so this will be an extra layer of risk insurance for the bank against a borrower, who might not be as sure as we have been at the bank, which says much more about our banks' practices in the past than it does about borrowers at the moment. We are actually potentially proposing to penalise borrowers more than we have done in the past with hidden costs through the interest rate charges from banks already, because our current banks cannot borrow on the capital market. The reason this insurance is needed - and it is needed - is that our banks cannot borrow on the capital markets. It should never be the case that the borrower pays. I appreciate that it costs €2,000 for a €200,000 mortgage, but the lender should pay, as it is the lender that will benefit from this. The customer will still pay their mortgage at the interest rates that are set by the banks at the moment. Could the witnesses give me their thoughts on that?