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

We have been over this ground several times previously, and Deputy Doherty will have an opportunity in committee to go through it on a line-by-line basis with the banks. What I have said to him is that we set targets and in any reasonable process over an extended period of time, once the targets are set by the Central Bank, I am reasonably satisfied if the bank informs us that those targets are being met. Of course we would like if it were moving at a faster pace, but it is moving at a satisfactory pace at present and significant progress is being made, with 54,000 mortgages having been restructured.

The amount of repossession taking place is very small. According to the last statistic I saw, it was a couple of hundred, and more than half of those were voluntary. This scare about people being put out of their homes in large numbers is simply not true.

It is true that if the possibility of repossession is not available in the legal system of a country, nobody in that country will ever get a mortgage, because the property is the security for the loan. If there is not a legal possibility of enforcement, then the mortgage sector moves out of that country.

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