Mr. Ed Sibley:

I certainly welcome the opportunity to comment and he has covered a large amount of ground. I am conscious of the time limits but I am certainly happy to engage within this committee and bilaterally if helpful.

The Deputy spoke about the financial crisis and the behaviour, business models and approach in the entire system failed leading into the financial crisis. I have no disagreement there. We have worked very hard over the past decade or more to both deal with the crisis that enveloped the country and to put in place a much more resilient system that protects the country, borrowers and consumers from any recurrence. It very significantly enhanced the regulatory framework both from a resilience perspective but also from a consumer protection perspective.

We have also undertaken much work to try to address the level of distress that resulted from the banking crisis. There has been much progress over many years on that. We can looked at the level of restructuring that has taken place across mortgages; approaching a quarter of loans that existed at the time of the crisis have had some degree of restructure. More than 130,000 loans were restructured to address elements of distress and another approximately 60,000 were addressed pre-distress.

When I reference numbers I am acutely conscious that I am talking about individuals and households. Unfortunately, there is still a legacy of distress, primarily with mortgage holders, the majority of which are now more than two years past due on mortgage repayments, both sitting within the banking system and some outside the banking system. We are absolutely committed to continuing to try to address that to the greatest extent that we can.

The majority of these borrowers are paying something and about half are deemed to be co-operating. There are potential solutions within the financial system for many of those borrowers but there are also challenges that go beyond the financial system where the borrowers are not co-operating or making repayments. We must consider the safety nets available for those types of borrowers.

Even right up to the courts system it is never too late to engage and we can see that with what comes out of the courts. We are pushing hard from a lender perspective to ensure they continue to strive to engage and we have also taken the hard lessons from the financial crisis into how we deal with the distress evident from the Covid-19 pandemic. We are trying to ensure the issues that arose immediately after the financial crisis do not arise again. This relates to borrowers whose incomes have been affected by the pandemic, and they should be supported to the greatest extent possible so they do not go into longer-term arrears.

The Deputy referred to raiders coming in and affecting the market. For any firm authorised in Ireland and any bank authorised within the eurozone able to branch into Ireland, we expect it to have a robust business model that is likely to be sustainable over the long term. It should have sufficient financial resources, including in times of stress, and it should have a good grasp of its risks. It should be well run and be able to be resolvable in the event that it fails.

I hope this addresses some of what the Deputy raised but as I said I am happy to engage bilaterally if that is helpful.