Mr. Padraic Kissane:

The challenge to that, however, is these books of loans are already sold and a sale of agreement is in place. I will make a point I consistently state, which is that it is never too late, when it comes to arrears on a mortgage, to deal with whoever owns the loan. I again put that out to the public. Irrespective of someone only finding out today that a husband has not paid the loan in ten years, it is never too late to contact somebody. There are certainly plenty of protections and entities in place - one is sitting to my right - including the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, MABS, and consumer information units. I implore any customer who even has a hint or knowledge that he or she is in arrears or about to go into arrears, that it is never too late to contact somebody, even if that customer has not paid anything. The entities I have always challenged are the people who do not do anything and are paying nothing. They should lose their homes. It is hard to say that, but if they are not engaging with everything that is there to help them, they should because non-engagement causes a further problem for the genuine cases.

The one issue with the setting of interest rates is we have to be careful regarding competition.

We have seen what has happened in banking in Ireland. Four entities have left, namely, Danske Bank, Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank and KBC. They did not leave because this was a profitable place to be. They left for reasons of capitalisation requirements and so on, so we have to be very careful that we do not have an end to the circle that we cannot see and that we do not end up with unintended consequences as a result of these capped rates and so forth.

I met a fund manager who had ethical funds to invest. I asked her if she lent me €1 billion to lend to the Irish mortgage market, what she would want in return and the answer was "our money". There are entities out there that would be keen to come to Ireland and I would rather focus more attention on getting the competition increased in this country than on saying that the Central Bank should do this or that. We now have only three mainstream entities left. Thankfully the credit unions are starting to move into this space, and the involvement of the post office and the arrival of Avant are also helpful to the broader market going forward. We cannot forget the first-time buyers today who are trying to get on the ladder and the difficulties they are experiencing. I know it is a broader question but it is important to state that the removal of competition could have very serious unintended consequences.