Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are trying to join all these cogs or facts. The measure of 3.5 times a person's income today is not the same as the same as it was for a family 20 years ago. Why is that? The incomes are far more volatile, as people are on short contracts and living hand-to-mouth. The garda and nurse would have had a pensionable job where income would have expectation for incrementably increasing income but that is not the case any more. We should be careful and use these macro-prudential tools. As I noted, we should consider 90% of the economic value rather than the sale value; that would be 90% of the €270,000 figure I mentioned and not the €400,000 mooted by the market and the clipboard auctioneers. They are saying a property is worth that much because others were sold at that price. It is not.

These are the types of guidelines we employed for business in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in ICC Bank. They are prudential because they correspond with reasonable, maintainable and expected income flows with the financial commitments on a more normalised repayment schedule and interest rate expectation.