Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will be aware, within the remit of the Central Bank's responsibilities for safeguarding stability and protecting consumers, its approach to mortgage arrears resolution is focused on ensuring the fair treatment of borrowers through a strong consumer protection framework and ensuring that lenders have appropriate arrears resolution strategies and operations in place.

There are clear steps outlined for lenders and how they engage with borrowers in the statutory code of conduct on mortgage arrears, CCMA, that forms part of the Central Bank's consumer protection measures.  There are clear steps for consumer protection, aimed specifically at the process to be followed by relevant firms, to ensure borrowers in arrears or pre-arrears in respect of a mortgage loan are treated in a timely, transparent and fair manner. Banks, retail credit firms and credit servicing firms are all required to comply with the CCMA.  There are regulations for firms lending to small and medium enterprises which regulated lenders have been required to comply with since 1 July 2016 and in the case of credit unions from 1 January 2017.

See this speech in context