Mr. Brian Hayes:

On the questions to me, we are meeting the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage this week. We submitted a proposal last week and we briefed Deputies Doherty and Conway-Walsh on that. We had a discussion with the Department over the summer so that it is aware of the proposal coming forward. I suspect it will need involvement from the Department of Finance on this, largely because our ambition is to create a product that can get over the first problem. The first problem is when someone has an engineer's report, the outcome of which is that they will be getting €350,000 from the State for remediation, but they have no money to get a developer or a builder or to buy supplies and they are of an age where they cannot do it. We recognise that the number one issue is around an interim funding proposal.

Our suggestion to the Department, broadly, from the three banks that have put this proposal through BPFI, is that we can provide maybe 10% or 15% of the overall grant upfront. The current legislation does not allow for that grant money to be paid upfront but we would do that on the basis that we will get the money back once the initial tranche is made from the housing authority. The reason we have done it that way is that were we to produce lending on this ,a lot of the people would not get the loans. They would not because we are governed by the consumer credit directive, which means we would have to do a full assessment of creditworthiness, including in respect of consumer protection code, CPC, and European Banking Authority, EBA, loan origination guidelines. A lot of these people would not get loans on that basis. We could get over that if we got this product agreed between the Government and ourselves. That is why we are looking for the commitment or the guarantee that we can get the 10% or 15% back.

On the question of the oversight committee, which was our suggestion put by the group in Donegal, we have a lot of knowledge of this because the BPFI was involved in the Priory Hall work. I was very struck by the comments made by the deputy governor at the committee last week were she correctly said that this is a much bigger problem and is a unique problem and we need everyone around the table. We need the homeowners, the representative groups, ourselves, the insurance industry, the construction industry, the Government and local authorities. We need everyone around the table. This is going to take a long time and we have got to get this right.

The banks can speak on the other issue but I have heard some people ask about the gap in funding and if there could be another product. The dilemma for us is that while we have certain security on existing loans, there are quite a number of people - we think more than 40% - whose loans are already paid off. There is no security. It would be fundamentally unfair if one category had an existing loan and another category did not. Banks will have to have regard to trying to make up that gap because I am hearing that with the first scheme there are significant gaps.

This is my last comment. I spoke to a woman in County Donegal a few weeks ago who was completing her house under the first scheme. She made the point that on putting a roof on, she was initially quoted €32,000. I think I give this figure last week in a briefing. She knows something about development and her husband know something about development. There were two other quotes of somewhere between €12,000 and €14,000. My concern is that public money, which is going in to try to get these people out of an appalling situation, will be scammed by a lot of people in the building sector not charging people correctly. We have to work on this together. It is more than just the banks. The Deputy has very honestly said in the past that he recognises that we are not liable for this but we have a relationship with customers and we are determined to work through this step by step. It seems to me that the number one priority is to give guidance and support to people in the construction sector in order that when people get money, they spend that money in the appropriate way to make sure they get the most they can for the development and for the public funds that will go into this.