Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

The composition of the group represented a pragmatic arrangement. Mr. Keane has been seconded from KPMG to the Department of Finance for some time. He is primarily an accountant with necessary expertise. Therefore, we put him in as leader of the group. There were officials from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government because they had expertise and responsibility for housing provision, in particular social housing. There were officials from the Department of Social Protection as they had connections with mortgage interest supplement and so on and realised the difficulties families got into. Their expertise was valuable. The Department of Justice and Equality has officials working on insolvency and bankruptcy legislation. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was involved because all of this had cost implications and it was represented to monitor them.

As a previous speaker rightly said, this was a group of public servants and, while they had their own mortgages, they did not deal with impaired mortgages in their working day. Therefore, it was very important that we accessed individuals who dealt with mortgages, including the issues of the granting of mortgages and impaired mortgages. Allied Irish Banks and the EBS are now in the one group, of which the State owns between 98% and 99%. We got two individuals in from the mortgage department because we needed particular expertise in order that that theory could be tested against the practice. It was not that they were given an inside track, it was just that we needed their expertise and Mr. Keane needed their expertise when he was drawing up the report.

To revert to Deputy Tuffy's question, which the Deputy has repeated in a different way, the Keane report suggests in respect of advisers that they "should operate in 3 to 4 regional clusters in order to ensure that expertise and knowledge is captured and shared". The report also recommends the linking of such clusters to MABS offices. It suggests:

The clusters could be legally part of MABS but would not have to be. However it would be important that there is a link to the MABS network to ensure that mortgage holders know how to access the advice.

Strict operating protocols would need to be enforced between MABS and these mortgage support clusters.

It would be envisaged that the need for this function would be [limited in] time [to] perhaps 3 years.

In respect of its scale, the report goes on to state:

It is very difficult to determine the number of people that will need this support.

Given that mortgage lenders estimate that they collectively require over 600 people in their Arrears Support Units it would be safe to assume that over 100 independent advisors would be needed in the first instance. However it would be quite likely that [the] number [would] increase in time.

Moreover, "The skills required would include financial, accounting and legal", and with regard to the funding of the group, Keane recommended the "funding for this function should be provided by mortgage lenders".

In other words, it is not just a suggestion but is fairly well fleshed out or filled out in the report itself. My point is I do not regard anything Mr. Keane recommends as being the final say on the issue. I want to hear what Deputies and outside groups think, after which I will bring proposals for the Government as well as an implementation mechanism to get this in place as quickly as possible.

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