Mr. Gerard O'Brien:

The Central Bank's code of conduct on mortgage arrears addresses alternative repayment arrangements or restructuring, whatever one wishes to call it, that people may avail of but those alternative repayment arrangements are listed in provision 39 of the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. Provision 39 states that lenders "may" explore those 12 options, not "shall" explore them, but "may". One of those options is permanently reducing the interest rate on the mortgage but the borrowers can only avail of that option under provision 39 if that option is offered by the lender. If it is not, they cannot. I hope the committee can take that away and have a look at it.

The other thing, which Dr. Lajoie mentioned in her opening statement, is the EU directive on credit purchasers and credit servicers. The Department of Finance asked MABS to make a submission and we did. We picked up on Articles 28 and 16a of the European directive. They list changing the interest rate as one of eight loan modifications that may be transposed into Irish law. However, the questions the Department asked us to address in the submission were about whether MABS agrees that those eight options, including the modification of the interest rate, should not be transposed. Our answer with regard to both Articles 16a and 28 was that we did not agree they should not be transposed into Irish law.