Mr. Padraic Kissane:

On the switching of mortgages, I re-registered as a mortgage intermediary because a couple of things had shifted dramatically with regard to the switching of properties. Property values have gone up. Loan to value has improved dramatically from when one could not move in 2013 or 2014, when we did not know what was going to happen. The ground is changing for people. For a lot of the people with whom I am engaging, I am preparing them for their exit from the vulture fund. It might not happen in the next month, or six weeks or six months. However, we can show them a journey to getting out. It is like a personal solvency arrangement to some degree. One nearly has to show them a roadmap of how to get away. From that moment their credit history and everything else is improving. What one has given them more than anything else is a purpose and structure for where they are going to get to. Obviously, a lot is tied into that such as the affordability of the loan and the certainty of application, qualification and so forth. However, that has been improved with the four times salary and so forth.

I will say one thing about the committee's request for vulture funds to come here. If they do not come, my alarm bells will go off. If their business model is as puppy love as the Central Bank claims, there is no reason they should not come. I have greater concerns if they refuse to come. What are they hiding? Now my detective brain or detective head says there is something of concern. If they come to address all of the issues we have raised today with reasonable and acceptable answers, that is fine. That is the business model and the mistake was selling to them in the first place. If that is the only error arising out of this, we have to live with it and try to help the people as best we can in other ways.

There is another matter I want to make a point on. It relates to tax relief and increasing mortgage interest relief. I ask that the committee does not go there. That is an interference in the marketplace that should not occur. Interest rates are going up for a reason. Mortgage interest relief is something I would not interfere with. There are consequences of it being a collective interference that will not help in the broader market. I want to make that point. Those are the things. With regard to switching, one should get out if possible or start the groundwork to getting out.