Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

134. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will address a matter (details supplied) regarding mortgages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27217/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Central Bank of Ireland (Bank) has recently introduced new macro prudential measures for residential mortgage lending which apply certain loan to value and loan to income limitations on such lending. The key objective of these regulations is to increase the resilience of the banking and household sectors to the property market and to reduce the risk of bank credit and house price spirals from developing in the future. Within the overall framework, the Bank has allowed for a certain flexibility by lenders to exceed these limitations when assessing individual cases. However, in line with the requirements of the Consumer Protection Code and other regulations, lenders will still be required to assess an individual borrower's affordability and lend prudently on a case by case basis. Lenders will be required to submit data on their residential mortgage lending to the Bank on two reporting dates: (a) at 30 June each year to reflect activity in the 6 month period ending on that date and (b) annually at 31 December to reflect activity in the 12 month period ending on that date.  

A preliminary aggregate level data submission must be submitted to the Bank within 10 working days of the reporting date. Within 20 working days of a reporting date, a completed monitoring template including loan level data must be submitted to the Bank together with a final reconciling aggregate-level data set. The first reporting date will be 30 June 2015 and this will be for the period from the date the Regulations came into effect until 30 June 2015.

Regarding the level of mortgage activity, data from Banking and Payments Federation Ireland indicates that, on average, around 2,340 mortgages per month were approved in the first five months of 2015 and this compares to the monthly average of around 1,810 for the same period in 2014.