Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is an area where I have been very active. I have met the banks and the non-banks and also MABS, the Insolvency Service of Ireland and the Central Bank at a round-table meeting at the end of August.

One of the outcomes of that was that for the first time we now have an agreed set of eligibility criteria for people whose mortgage is in the non-bank sector to enable them to switch their mortgage to a bank. All of the banks have signed up to that and have committed to implementing those criteria. The Central Bank's initial estimate is that about a quarter, around 27,000, of the mortgages in the non-bank sector currently fall within the scope of the eligibility criteria. Up to now we have seen very low levels of switching from the non-bank sector to banks and that needs to change. There needs to be a genuine welcome and an appetite among banks to receive customers who are within the eligibility criteria and who are currently in the non-bank sector. I will be watching that very closely over the weeks and the months ahead.

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