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

As Minister for Finance, I am absolutely entitled to engage directly with the Central Bank and tease out with its officials the respective roles of the Executive, that is, the Government, and the role of the Central Bank as regulator. That is why I raised the issues directly in person and in writing. We had an initial response from the Central Bank about its consumer protection supervisory roles and we await a full response from it.

As the Deputy knows and with his support, from Opposition, I brought in and successfully secured the enactment of legislation that ensured that these loan owners, who were not previously fully regulated, became fully regulated. It came within the ambit of all of the Central Bank powers, in terms of consumer protection, code of conduct and mortgage arrears and so on. That is a basic entitlement that every borrower has. I acknowledge there are some borrowers in this circumstance who cannot switch at the moment. There are others who can, by the way. There are others who perhaps were in arrears a number of years ago and now have a number of years consecutively of paying their loan without interruption, and thus are no longer classified a non-performing exposure and they could actually be sold. We need to see switching activity being facilitated by the mainstream banks as well to receive these customers who are able to switch away from non-bank lenders. I believe at least a portion of them are but I am not saying that all of them are.

The issue that I have is that the Deputy is giving the impression to people every week - I know he wants this to be all about me, but he is the person who offers himself as a prospective Minister for Finance - that the State can step in and fix every problem and pick up every bill.