Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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66. To ask the Minister for Finance when the central credit register will be fully operational; the steps that have been taken and the costs incurred to date; the reason for the delay; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41062/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am informed by the Central Bank of Ireland that it plans that a Central Credit Register (CCR) solution will be in place by mid-2016. To that end, the Central Bank has:

- signed contracts with CRIF Ireland Limited in February 2015 to establish and operate the CCR on its behalf;

- progressed a design stage to specify the detailed data requirements and conducted a data survey with representative lenders;

- published a Consultation Paper in April 2015 seeking views on key issues, in response to which 19 submissions were received in advance of the closing date of 12 June (in relation to this, the Central Bank will publish feedback in the coming months), and

- commenced a privacy impact assessment to ensure that the appropriate controls will be in place to safeguard personal data across the end to end processes.

Work continues on finalising the CCR solution design and on drafting the necessary regulations under the Credit Reporting Act 2013 to establish the legal basis for lenders to submit data to the register. The take on of data will be implemented on a phased basis, with Phase 1 focusing on lending to consumers and Phase 2 focusing on lending to businesses. It is expected that data submissions by lenders will commence in late 2016 but the final deadline will be influenced by the scale of the technical and operational changes to be implemented by lenders. Enquiries by lenders against the CCR data are likely to commence in early 2017 when data quality has been assured. Borrowers will be entitled to access their own credit reports at that time also. The provision of the CCR is a significant task and the commencement of full operations will depend on data submissions from over 500 lenders.

The Central Bank has also advised me that, since the commencement of the project in late 2013, the costs it has incurred to end October 2015 have amounted to €1,543,000. However, it should be noted that the costs associated with the CCR will, in due course, be recovered from CCR users.