Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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65. To ask the Minister for Finance when the mortgage credit directive will be transposed into law; how this will impact on the sale of mortgage products; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4938/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I have signed regulations to transpose the Mortgage Credit Directive and arrangements are in train to lay the transposing regulations before the Houses of the Oireachtas.  Information regarding the regulations will also be put on the Department's website.

The overall objective of the Mortgage Credit Directive is to provide for a more common European mortgage market with minimum standards and provisions for the protection of consumer mortgage borrowers and will therefore build on existing Irish measures in this area including the Consumer Credit Act, the Central Bank's Consumer Protection Code, Code of Conduct on Mortgage Arrears and Minimum Competency Code for financial service providers.  There are a number of areas where these new regulations will complement and add to the existing framework in relation to the provision of residential mortgages such as:

- a legal obligation on a creditor to conduct creditworthiness assessment and a requirement to extend credit to a consumer only where the assessment indicates that the consumer is likely to meet the obligations of the agreement;

- enhanced information provision requirements on mortgage lenders and mortgage credit intermediaries which now includes the mandatory provision of standard pre-contractual information to consumers by means of the European Standardised Information Sheet (ESIS), as well as a standard way of calculating the annual percentage rate of charge (APRC) to capture the total cost of credit to the consumer;

- standards for the performance of service, such as conduct of business obligations and competence knowledge requirements, for mortgage providers and mortgage credit intermediaries;

- other consumer protection provisions in relation to mortgage credit such as rights on early repayment, notification of interest rate changes, a formal onus on lenders to exercise reasonable forbearance if mortgage repayment difficulties emerges and restricting default charges a lender may charge to a level that will be limited to the recovery of costs;

- some additional regulation and control of mortgage credit intermediaries, including a requirement for such regulated entities to hold (after a transition period) professional indemnity insurance.

The discretions contained in the Mortgage Credit Directive were the subject of a public consultation process and the decisions on these were also published and have been incorporated as necessary into the regulations.