Mr. Ed Farrell:

Any individual who is earning an income and is a member of a local credit union is entitled to approach the credit union and see what its mortgage offering is. The same rules apply. The same macro-prudential rules, which means a multiple of 3.5 times earnings applies and first-time buyers can borrow up to 80% or 90% of the cost of the property. At the same time, the average mortgage we are seeing is approximately €100,000. We have not seen mortgages of €240,000 or €250,000 coming through yet. Credit unions only have a certain amount of space so they will probably do more of the smaller loans. Doing fewer of the bigger ones mitigates risk as well. In theory, however, there is no barrier there.