Mr. Brendan Burgess:

I have raised that with the Department of Finance, but there is no interest. Its focus seems to be around switching. The officials will refer to the great reports the ESRI or the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission compiled on switching or to the retail banking review and will talk about encouraging people to switch their mortgages. I have been trying to say to the Department that that is not the issue. Most of these people cannot switch. The Department just seems very reluctant to engage on this issue at all. It wants to do more research. In the context of the 95,000 mortgage holders or 113,000 accounts, it wants to find out how many of them can switch but just will not do so. It wants to go off and collect data and do research and analysis. Does it matter whether it is 9,000 or 19,000? We still want those people to be protected. The Department is not enthused by this. It was also not enthused by the previous Bills that were brought in to control mortgage rates. It wanted nothing to do with that either. It will be blocking any development, but this is not about the Department of Finance. It should be the Oireachtas that calls the shots. It is up to it to draft legislation and so on.