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

I want to move to the witnesses from the Central Bank. At the centre of all of this is the debate around non-performing loans, NPLs, and the requirements of the European Central Bank, ECB, single supervisory mechanism, SSM, to reduce the level of non-performing loans within the Irish banking system down towards European norms or the European average. Can the witnesses give us a sense of where we are on that front? AIB made another announcement only yesterday. All of the banks are now expressing confidence that they will have reached their required level of being at or close to the European norm by the end of the year. This is moving quickly and the question of whether the Bill applies or does not apply to existing mortgage contracts is pretty fundamental but can the Central Bank witnesses give us an overall sense of where we are on NPLs within the Irish banking system, what level they are at, taking account of recent announcements, and is it the case that they must be at 4% or 5% of a bank's loan book by the end of the year?