Mr. Brian Hayes:

I will make two quick responses. The first home scheme is an initiative of the Irish Government but half of the equity that went in for the equity part of the product has come from the Irish banking sector. That is something that has already made a difference to at least 600 people who have purchased their home and another 2,500 who have got agreement to proceed with the first home scheme. That is something the Irish banks have produced in terms of putting equity into that scheme in partnership with the Government. We also have a help-to-buy scheme, which is very productive in terms of helping first-time buyers. There are a lot of schemes.

I would like to take an opportunity to say this in response to one of Deputy Durkan's points. Traditionally, Banking and Payments Federation Ireland and our banking members have had a long-standing agreement with MABS on early engagement and a range of other supports we put in place. We have now managed to get the credit servicing firms to be part of that agreement. What does that mean? It means that if a constituent has a difficulty, who probably wants to talk to MABS more than to a credit servicing firm or a bank, as he or she might be more confident with that, and who reaches out to MABS, we now have a dedicated person in each of the firms to deal with MABS on the credit servicing side and we also have biweekly meetings for MABS and the firm and an escalated decision on the credit decisions. Some of the frustrations MABS has talked about to us as a sector are because it cannot get an early credit decision from some of the firms.

We hope those three things will make a difference to some of the cases where people are more confident to go to MABS than they are to a lender, be it a credit servicing firm or a bank. We will wait and see if we can make further progress on that.