John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I did get my hair cut. I thank the Minister for noticing. That is very kind of him. I am in flying form today as a result of it. My point is that many of my friends are looking at trying to get a mortgage. It is the biggest issue for my generation. We are talking about people who are well educated, work really hard, have good salaries, pay more in rent than they would if they had a mortgage and are more than capable of paying back a mortgage but cannot get any sort of mortgage from a bank in the first place because for whatever reason, the bank does not have the appetite for it. When we look at how much the pendulum has swung from ten or 12 years ago when people of my generation were in their late teens or early 20s and people could get a mortgage without a problem, we can see the pendulum has swung the other way and it is very difficult to get a mortgage. What people of my generation are asking for is the opportunity to get a mortgage. It is a fair message to send to people that if they work hard and have a good job, they should be able to get a mortgage, particularly if they are already paying through the nose in rent.

Others have mentioned it in terms of credit unions or more competitiveness. The problem we really face is that there is no competition in the market and the few banks that are still here can charge what they want and do what they want. We could look at credit unions and I go back to people who are more experienced in this matter. I went to a bank recently for something but there was zero appetite on its part. Some of that was because of my precarious state of employment. Being in politics was one reason. I then went to a credit union to get a commercial loan instead and found there was huge appetite for that. The credit union was more than happy to do it and I got a really good rate. Credit unions are just dying to lend money to people. They want to be able to do it and if the Government could try to make it as easy as possible for that to happen, it might be a good idea to at least look at.

We talk about the future of banking but it would be good to have a conversation about the future of lending. How do we introduce competitiveness into our market? How do we make it competitive for the consumer and allow him or her to shop around and get a good mortgage in the first instance? How do we reintroduce that competition in the market for first-time buyers? If the Government can do that over the next three or four years and say we want to make this market more competitive and easier for first-time buyers, we will doing the people of my generation a huge service. I would be interested in hearing the Minister's views on that.