Ms Derville Rowland:

We are talking about the possibility of customers switching from the non-lending non-bank sector to other mortgage providers with the idea that they get a better priced product for themselves. I am just saying this so we are on the same page. The concern is that customers have choice, which is an important element in a functioning mortgage market. Switching generally is very low in Ireland. At a high level in the system, we saw it being a bit higher last year because many families could see the writing on the wall and they fixed for a while, where they could, to give themselves certainty. However, switching is generally low.

Nobody can give a 100% precise figure on how many customers will be eligible to switch from the non-lending non-bank sector to other sectors. We now have welcome clarity from the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, BPFI, announcement on the criteria that a customer would need to meet to be able to switch. Some of those we can tell something about, which is that they would need to have a mortgage that is paying capital and interest and has been performing for two years. We gave the committee a figure of the outside scope of it to be 54,000 in the 4 July letter we wrote to Deputy Doherty. Deputy Conway-Walsh has given some figures. We have been trying to assess what kind of ballpark realistic figure there is, but they are estimates. The estimate we have is theoretical because we still do not know about their personal income and the loan-to-value, which is on a case-by-case basis. The figure we are getting from industry is an approximate one and it certainly could change, but it could be a ballpark of about 27,000 customers, although that is based on those loans fully repaying on capital and interest and having no credit difficulties for two years. There are then the additional criteria, which are loan-to-value and loan-to-income, so we cannot tell and it could be less than that. I am trying to give the Deputy an approximate figure but it could change because we are just looking at getting a fix on that particular area.