Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

It has been agreed that the code of conduct on mortgage arrears applies to the mortgage arrears lending activities of all regulated entities except for credit unions. By and large, the credit unions have agreed to this but equally, by and large, they do not offer full mortgages. In fairness to them, however, they have been putting mechanisms in place. People tend to have loans with credit unions which may be to furnish houses but the institutions are not mortgage providers. All regulated entities operating in the State have signed up to the code of conduct on mortgage arrears. The definition of these is a financial services provider, authorised, registered or licensed by the Central Bank of Ireland, or a financial services provider, authorised, registered or licensed in another EU country or EEA member state which has provided or is providing mortgage lending activities in the State.

To be clear to Deputies, the code applies to all financial providers which provide mortgage lending activities. Under the mortgage arrears resolution process, each branch, or office of a lender in the case of a lender who does not operate a network, must have at least one person with specific responsibility for dealing with arrears and pre-arrears cases and for liaising with the lenders' arrears support unit in respect of these cases.

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