Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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284. To ask the Minister for Finance his or the Central Bank of Ireland's plans to amend the code of conduct on mortgage arrears; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18320/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The effective management of the mortgage arrears issue is an area that remains under continuous review.  More and concerted action can be undertaken by the banks to assist customers in arrears.  As the Deputy is aware the Taoiseach has previously announced that the Government is considering a range of options to support the existing framework and to improve the uptake of personal insolvency solutions.  Given the importance of the issue, his Department is co-ordinating the response across the various Government Departments and agencies and I anticipate that a detailed announcement will be forthcoming shortly.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Central Bank carried out an extensive review of the Code of Conduct on Mortgage Arrears (CCMA) in 2013. The main objectives of this review were to ensure that the CCMA continued to provide a strong framework to protect borrowers in mortgage arrears and also to ensure that it enabled the delivery of long term, affordable and sustainable solutions between the lender and the borrower. 

The revised CCMA, which came into effect on 1 July 2013 reflects the outcome not only of the public consultation process undertaken during the review, but also the Central Bank's ongoing monitoring of lenders' practices as well as research and inspections of firms.

I am informed by the Central Bank that it has commenced a themed inspection of compliance with the CCMA. This themed inspection is building on project work already carried out by the Central Bank on mortgage arrears, including the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Strategies (MARS) project; Mortgage Arrears Resolution Targets (MART) audits; the revision of the CCMA in 2013; the Revised CCMA Implementation themed review, which included on-site visits; and CEO engagements on mortgage arrears, as well as on-going supervisory engagement with individual lenders.   

This current themed inspection commenced in quarter four of 2014 and includes on site inspections of a number of regulated mortgage lenders to examine the processes in place around certain provisions of the CCMA and the controls lenders have in place to ensure compliance with those processes and the CCMA.  I have been informed by the Central Bank that it plans to publish the results of this inspection at the end of the first half of 2015 and I look forward to this publication.