Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Minister is probably more aware than I that part of the reason for the mess in which the Irish banks find themselves is that they borrowed short to lend long. However, people who borrowed on mortgages have borrowed long. An individual family who bought a mortgage borrowed long but many of the banks borrowed short. The actuarial valuations seek to value the cost of long borrowing, not necessarily the actual borrowing the banks undertook. It may have been what they should have done but the mess they are in suggests that in many cases they did not.

Will the Minister arrange to extend the study to include international best practice on this issue? In one or two years' time, if the European Central Bank began to lift interest rates, fixed term mortgages may become attractive again. As the Minister will be aware, people are advised to shop around in a narrow sense for the best possible deal. We should consider what is available or what takes place in the Untied States and in places where penalties exist. Some of these penalties have been as high as €20,000 or €30,000 for hard pressed families. Will the Minister extend the review deeper and further to include an examination of the approach of other countries to ensure borrowers get a fair deal as far as possible?

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