Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On mortgage interest rates and the issue of risk-weighting capital - I know the Department of Finance published a paper and I have been in correspondence with the deputy Governor, Mr. Sibley, on it - I am trying to fully understand that. It seems to me that a new entrant coming into the Irish market is very disadvantaged in that it has to use the standardised approach. Even for a low loan-to-value mortgage, the risk-weighting requirement for it would be 35%. When one compares that to other jurisdictions, that is a very onerous capital requirement. Finance Ireland is a retail credit firm and, as I understand it, retail credit firms are not subject of those risk-weighting requirements. The prospects of the traditional foreign lender coming into the Irish market with those types of capital requirements and offering groundbreaking mortgage pricing is not very likely, is it?