Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with many of the concerns expressed by Deputy Boyd Barrett. The primary concern is that there was a code of conduct to deal with persons in mortgage arrears which the Central Bank applied to the lending agencies but because of the sale of loan books sometimes an agency which was regulated by the Central Bank and subject to the code of conduct on mortgage arrears applied by the Central Bank, the loan book was transferred to a non-regulated agency so the code no longer applied. We succeeded in getting practically all of them to voluntarily subscribe to the code but that is a weak situation because volunteerism can be quite weak. It was the desire of all members of this committee and indeed of all Members of the House, that we would extend the CCMA, code of conduct on mortgage arrears, under law to the entities to which it did not apply. That is what we are doing in this Bill.

There are other issues around mortgage arrears which are very important but it is not the purpose of this Bill to deal with them and we have dealt with them elsewhere. I am not in a position to help the Deputy in the various suggestions he is making because the suggestions are not within the scope of the Long Title of the Bill.