Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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152. To ask the Minister for Finance if he has or intends to formally request the Central Bank of Ireland to review any aspect of its mortgage rules; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1889/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank of Ireland, in line with its mandate to safeguard financial stability, has put in place macro-prudential measures for new residential mortgage lending.  These measures apply proportionate loan-to-value and loan-to-income limits to mortgage lending by regulated financial service providers in the Irish market.  The key objective of these measures is to increase the resilience of the banking and household sectors to the housing sector and to reduce the risk of bank credit and house price spirals from developing in the future. 

As the Deputy is aware, the Central Bank is independent in the formulation and implementation of these macro prudential measures.  In that context, the Central Bank committed itself to monitoring the implemented measures and I have been informed by the Central Bank that it will publish studies assessing the operation of the rules and of what it is seeing in the market in the second half of 2016.  While no further detail on the format of this work is available at this time, the Governor nevertheless did indicate that if the Central Bank sees strong reasons to vary the rules then it would be open minded about making an adjustment if the analysis suggests that a change, in either direction, is appropriate.  However, this will be a matter for the Central Bank to consider in due course.