Mr. Gary Tobin:

I thank the Senator for his questions. I am looking at statistics for new mortgage lending. Back in 2006, we were lending around €39 billion in mortgage lending. That figure now stands at around €8.7 billion, which is a substantial increase on 2013 when the figure was €2.5 billion. We are probably not back to normal levels of mortgage lending.

Clearly, what was happening in the so-called bubble years was completely unsustainable and obviously the legacy of that casts a very long shadow. It has impacted on so many peoples' lives in really awful ways. The reality is that a lot has been done. As the Central Bank representatives have said, more than 111,000 mortgage restructures already have taken place. The personal insolvency legislation that was put in place here has been widely praised internationally. The Abhaile scheme being operated by MABS is helping. It should be noted that we have cases of very long-term arrears of four and five years here, which are not seen in other countries simply because others tend to repossess property much quicker than we do.

It is an absolute challenge to resolve some of these issues but it is beyond the purview of the Department of Finance to suggest more structures that could be put in place. That would probably be a matter for our colleagues in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Clearly the nature of banking in Ireland is changing right now. On foot of the financial crisis, the traditional banks have shrunk back from lending in a whole range of areas. They are being challenged by fintech companies and others. The likelihood is that the role of non-banks, and I use that term very broadly, across the whole area of banking and not just mortgage lending, is likely to increase in the future. We may all wish that the traditional high street banks are the ones with which we have to engage forever more but that is not going to be the reality in the future. It is quite likely that people will be dealing with purely online banks very soon. It would be a mistake to think that there is only one type of institution that should be able to offer lending services in Ireland.