Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Nobody is arguing for any bank to adopt a risk appetite that would not be prudent; I definitely am not. What I am trying to find out is what is prudent from the viewpoint of Bank of Ireland. We have reports this morning in the Irish media that the European Commission is saying that the major domestic economic risk to Ireland is the issue of house supply and house price inflation. We have seen house prices increase by 13% in the past year. Rents are now 22% above the peak rate of 2008. Where do prices have to go? Ms McDonagh talked about the mismatch in supply and demand as 15,000 compared to 40,000. With these fundamentals, how much risk is there in terms of lending to a certain sector? How can that risk be reduced because we have a situation where people are telling us that they cannot get the funding, to the point that the State is introducing legislation to make the State's funding available because there is a view that the banks are not providing the funding to the sector?