Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In relation to the mortgage market, the Governor has not changed the macroprudential rules. I believe that house prices need to come down, but I do not think that changing the macroprudential rules is the way to solve the pressure that people are under. I have spoken to the Governor about this myself. He makes it clear that the rules have prevented house prices from increasing by 15% to 20%. That is quite a significant amount of money if one was to translate that into hard cash for families. There has been pressure in relation to loosening these rules. The Governor has resisted that pressure from different quarters from certain areas in the political sphere and also within the banking sphere.

How convinced is the Governor that loosening the rules, if he were to do so, would automatically lead to an increase house prices?

One of the arguments I have been making for quite a while is that the banks need to use the exemptions that are available to them. I refer to the 20% that allows people to be catered for when they do not reach either of the targets. In other words, there is a certain flexibility. There have been changes in how banks are dealing with that on a quarter-by-quarter basis, but is the Governor satisfied that all banks are using the flexibility within the rules to the maximum in order to ensure that their customers' needs are met?