The committee is in public session. Apologies have been received from Senator O'Toole. The first item on the agenda is the draft minutes of the meeting of 17 January, which were circulated to members. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. The only issue arising from the minutes is an item of correspondence deferred from the last meeting in respect of a matter in which Senator O'Toole is involved. In his absence, we will defer it to the next meeting.
The next item on the agenda is correspondence. Members can see from the circulated list that document No. 0014 is a letter from the Minister for Social and Family Affairs regarding the position of farming women in the social insurance system. Senator John Paul Phelan raised this matter with the committee some time ago and information was forwarded to the Minister for detailed response. I suggest we note the correspondence and if members believe there are issues to be raised, they should do so through the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs.
The next item is a letter from the Financial Regulator on the way in which various local authorities administer affordable housing loans and give advice to borrowers about financial arrangements. The letter is addressed to me as Chairman and I will explain the background to it. Approximately once a year, as a matter of courtesy, the Financial Regulator invites me to discuss matters of relevance to the Oireachtas. In such a meeting before Christmas, I raised the issue of local authority staff throughout the State administering loans for affordable housing and shared ownership schemes.
While financial institutions are regulated and must operate according to clear guidelines, local authority staff are effectively undertaking the same business without any such regulation. They deal with people who cannot access financial institutions because their incomes preclude them from obtaining mortgages, and offer advice to prospective borrowers on mortgage rates, interest rates and so on. Many of these local authority staff are giving advice beyond their competence.
I asked the Financial Regulator to comment on this and its detailed reply is included for members' information. I suggest we note this correspondence. It is an issue, however, that members might wish to deal with individually. Many participants in the affordable housing arrangement or the shared ownership scheme have come to us in difficulty in recent times because of fixed loans. Regardless of changes to interest rates, some people are locked into a fixed interest rate for life because that is what they signed up to with their local authority. There is not the same flexibility in loans from local authorities in terms of, for example, switching from a fixed to a variable interest rate after one or two years as is the case with loans from financial institutions. It is those dealing with local authorities, however, who may be most in need of this type of flexibility. I believe they are badly served by the current arrangement and all members may wish to take up this point.
This constitutes the background to the discussion in question and I leave it to members to take the matter further. I wish to see changes in this respect and the joint committee will note the letter. Is that agreed? Agreed.