Mr. David Hall:

There are many animal organisations with better advocacy protections and consumer rights than consumers of financial institutions. We are asking who regulates the regulator. We have an in-house statutory regulator to regulate entities and a whole host of other financial products and services, and at the same time it is allegedly there to protect consumers.

They do not fit given the amount of money and the amount of risk involved. We saw during the tracker mortgage scandal and we see with the mortgage arrears the impact this has on human life. The economy is way too great to have a situation where an unregulated entity, the Central Bank, can have that exclusive power. It must be segregated to ensure we protect consumers. They need to know that there is an independent body. Before I came in today, someone sent me a message. One of the key parts of the message was that they had gone to a personal insolvency practitioner and got their loan restructured but that Start Mortgages was now upping the rates, that they could not pay any more and that they have to go back to court for a variation. One of the points they raised was that they sent five letters to the Central Bank that were unacknowledged. Where do you go when you have a complaint? You can go to the Ombudsman but from a regulatory perspective, is there some place that can help someone deal with genuine concerns and genuine risks? Mr. Kissane made some points about terms and conditions earlier. Where is there an independent entity with statutory powers that can challenge the Central Bank on its behaviour and its lack of activity and take test cases, as and when required? I have an additional point that no one likes to talk mention. Many of the vulture funds have buy-to-let mortgages where individuals, large and small landlords, have seen rates going up at an obscene level. This is having a massive effect and impact from a housing perspective and they are all interlinked. I know there is a political conversation about the eviction ban and so on, which is all very well and good, but ultimately in a housing crisis, this has a massive impact. We have individuals with one, two, three or more properties where the loans are buy-to-lets but which are not in arrears. However, the interest rates are going up, putting them under immense pressure in a situation where they cannot increase rents. There will be a come-to-Jesus moment there and it is already happening with landlords who are exiting. It is relevant too. We have a major cohort of lenders who are effectively controlling or impacting on part of the housing market which is very dangerous.