Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 4 October 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Banking Sector: Quarterly Engagement with the Central Bank

9:30 am

Mr. Ed Sibley:

In the case of many of them. There are two limits in place for lending of more than five years and more than ten years. I appreciate there are a smaller number of credit unions that are already close to these limits, but they are lending approximately one third of what in aggregate they could lend relative to those limits. There are a handful of credit unions that are bumping up against those limits. Credit unions can lend from a mortgage perspective today, as many are doing, but we are looking at the approach to how those limits are calculated. The limits are currently based on the lender's total loan book. As the committee will be well aware, the number of loans in credit unions has been flat to falling. A better answer to that is to focus on the reserves they have and to put the limits in place around the reserves on the credit unions' capacity to lend, but we will consult on that shortly.

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