Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Patrick Davitt:
The biggest thing that changed in this particular edition from the last edition was they have a mortgage lending value in it, which wasn't in it before. A mortgage lending value would be a sustainable value for a mortgage, like the Germans use this particular mortgage lending value for sustainable value of properties and they brought in this into law. It is BelWertV is what they call it, and that might not be the greatest German explanation of it, but we call it BelWert five. It was brought into law in Germany in 2006, which would use mortgage lending value on a property which would smooth the value over a particular term of the mortgage. So it could be over 20 years or it could be over 15 years, or whatever it is over. So that mortgage lending value and a definition of mortgage lending value was brought into the blue book in 2016. There are other things brought into it, like there are different directives brought into it, like the new mortgage directive, there is the capital requirements document, is part of that in it, which were brought into Ireland in law in 2012, I think. So those documents are there in the blue book which weren't there or would not have been there before. So as current evaluation standards change, the blue book is updated.