Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My personal opinion is that it is not that the banks were not acting on this over the last two years or so but that many of the solutions put forward were not sustainable. At the end of December, for example, there was a total stock of 79,852 mortgage accounts that were categorised as restructured. Of these restructured accounts, 42,037 were not in arrears.

The arrangement appears to have been sustainable for one half of them and unsustainable for the other half given that half of them were in arrears again.

Of the restructured accounts, 37% are on interest only arrangements and a further 17,000 mortgages are on payments that are greater than interest only, in other words, interest plus some capital. What we want are arrangements that are sustainable. When someone enters into an arrangement, the matter should be done and dusted and the person should be able to move on, provided there is no dramatic change in his or her income. Obviously, the arrangement will change if somebody wins the lottery or an unemployed partner returns to work. We want sustainable arrangements and the reason we want the Central Bank to monitor and random sample the arrangements that are being made is to test their sustainability. It is not the case that nothing was being done but that what was being done was not satisfactory.

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