Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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258. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of new licenses issued to companies offering equity release requests and lifetime loans in the Irish market over the past 12 years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5829/25]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank of Ireland is responsible for the supervision of all regulated financial service providers.

While it does not regulate or authorise firms on a product specific basis, firms which are involved in the general activity of providing credit or other type of financial accommodation to consumers, and which may include equity release type financial products such as lifetime mortgages or home reversion agreements, may be authorised as either a credit institution, a credit union, a retail credit firm or a home reversion firm.

The Central Bank’s Registers sets out all the firms that currently have such an authorisation and these are available on the ‘Registers’ section of the Central Bank’s website and are updated as and when necessary by the Central Bank. In addition to the Registers, the Central Bank advised that it published its inaugural ‘Authorisation and Gatekeeping Report in June 2024’ (which is also available on the Regulation section of the Central Bank website).

This report provides authorisation data for the period 1 January to 31 December 2023 and such a report will be published annually in the future. Prior to this, authorisations data was published as part of the Central Bank’s ‘Annual Report and Annual Performance Statement’ (copies of which can be found on the Annual Reports Archive section of the Central Bank website).