Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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102. To ask the Minister for Finance the extent to which he remains satisfied that first-time house buyers or the purchasers of a family home will not be priced out of the market in the future; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17766/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank, which has an independent mandate to preserve and protect financial stability, introduced mortgage lending regulations 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. The current Central Bank residential mortgage lending regulations has regard to the particular situation of first time buyers and provide for a lower deposit requirement for first time buyers of a primary home property compared to other residential mortgage borrowers. For first time buyers, a 90 per cent LTV limit applies on the first €220,000 value of a property and an 80 per cent LTV limit applies on any value of the property thereafter. For non-first time buyers of a primary home, a flat 80% LTV threshold applies and for buy to let borrowers a 70% LTV threshold applies. However, lenders also have a certain limited flexibility to, at their discretion, to exceed these thresholds when lending to credit worthy borrowers.

However, it is important to keep the requirementsof first time buyers under consideration. As the Deputy is aware, the new Programme for a Partnership Government (PfPG) provides for a range of measures which seeks to improve the supply of housing and to protect and promote home ownership. In particular, it indicates that the Government submission to the Central Bank will include a request to consider a "capacity to pay" (e.g. the payment capacity of potential purchasers based on rent paid over a five year period to be off set against the current deposit rules). The Central Bank has now commenced this macro prudential review process and my Department will engage with the Central Bank on this.

It could also be noted that recent mortgage lending data from the BPFI indicates that, in the first quarter of 2016, lending to first time buyers amounted to €462 million which was higher that the €405 million in credit which was extended to mover purchaser borrowers.