Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 March 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Appropriation Accounts and Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 6 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Financial Outturn for 2011
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 3 - Banking and Insurance Measures
Chapter 5 - EU Financial Transactions

11:30 am

Mr. John Moran:

No, first, the technical amendment that needs to take place does not cover all mortgages. That is important. We are seeing the surrender of some houses and some repossessions in the system. Temporary measures were put in place under the code of conduct from the Central Bank to defer the repossession of houses, frankly, until such time as we were able to put in place all of the rest of the machinery needed to resolve so large a crisis. The personal insolvency legislation is in place; the system is being put in place and will be operational towards the middle of the year. That will be a very important part of the toolkit to resolve this issue and the Central Bank is looking at its code to see what is the appropriate balance, but it is always important to remember that the decisions of the banks should also be made with respect to their profitability. As I said, if there is a situation where somebody has an unsustainable mortgage, it needs to be resolved. Equally, in a situation where the debt is unsustainable, the bank needs to resolve the issue.