Results 1,021-1,040 of 16,492 for speaker:Ciarán Lynch

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----yes, and then we see an average of second-hand house prices to the average industrial wage and we also see a similar, sort of, reflection there. If I can just move on to the other slide, and what we have there is the residential house price annual, and we see it moving from 1992, the blue line being new house prices and the red line being second-hand house prices, both growing quite...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----of the noughties. Now, in your earlier discussion then, and we're, kind of, because we're moving to conclusion, that I would be looking, say, from witnesses as well maybe to give insights that allow us to, kind of, move towards findings and conclusions ....listening to you to this afternoon there seems to be three things, kind of, on the table with regard to the mortgage environment....

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: So you'd accept that?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: That's grand. And also then there's the issue of competition that you referred to earlier where a competitor introduces a new product into the market that has, what was the term you used earlier ... that brought different types of concerns to the earlier type of concerns. One was about the, sort of, the design of the product and so forth. You were on about here the prudentialism of that...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----this stuff as well. So, could I put it to you, Mr. Went, that, as a proposition and to get your thoughts on it, that during the 2000s right up to the property crash, as indicated on the slides that I showed, house prices were escalating at an unprecedented level year-on-year? Average industrial wage, as Deputy Higgins would also ... that the average house price was increasing by the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: They should have been priced out but they didn't become priced out because house purchasing continued right up to the peak of the crash later in the decade because the figures show us that there were even more houses being bought. It wasn't that the slide is going up in price; the consumption of houses is increasing also.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: So, in any way, was this facilitated by the designing of mortgage products that seemed to have met the affordability criteria but, in actual effect, was camouflaging the price of the property or by extending the mortgage term? Like, so what we had here ... the design of the product was still meeting the affordability criteria but the price of the product was being camouflaged because of the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Would you care to comment on that?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: But as the market is changing, the product is changing-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: ----- to purchase. Or, sorry, the mortgage. There are two of them products. The house is changing. And we also have the elongation of the loans, the lengthening of the loans, the mortgage terms, and interest-only, 100% and all the rest of it happening, making the affordability criteria to acquire the mortgage-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----still accessible, even though the house price-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----is gone off the map.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. And in-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Well, this is the proposition I want to talk out with you now, okay. And further to that then, we had a ... in the residential market. Concurrently to that we have the buy-to-let market, where there is significant mortgage interest relief for the investor. And, as you said earlier, in fact, a high level of interest on the loan is advantageous to the buy-to-let owner because they get a...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: ----- prices and so forth. So, in that regard, and, kind of, coming back to my earlier proposition to you that people should have been priced out of the market earlier, in summary, did financial institutions and your own elongate the bubble through the design of these products?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: So, the design of mortgage products actually suspended the crash. Is that right? Would you concur with that proposition, and that the crash could have come sooner and not have been so extreme if the mortgage products were not-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----designed in the way they were to elongate it?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (3 Sep 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay.