Last week, many of us watched the television programme, "The Great Irish Sell-off", which clearly showed how deeply the vultures' claws have gone into the State. The programme pointed out that 90,000 home mortgages had been sold by the banks to vulture funds. Today's Irish Independent has reports that hundreds of farmers are concerned that the vultures are about to swoop on them and repossess their farms. When will the Government clip the wings of the vultures or do they, as the Minister for Finance believes, play an important role in the State? Will the Government take any action to protect the 90,000 home owners and farmers who are concerned that the vultures are about to swoop?

As the Deputy is aware, the Central Bank does not maintain a record of the number of commercial loans, including SME loans, that have been sold on by the original underwriter. However, it has stated that portfolio sales are considered as part of the normal supervisory engagement. More importantly for individual consumers, legislation and regulations implemented by the Oireachtas and the Central Bank protect SMEs when dealing with regulated and unregulated firms. Under the Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) Act 2015, the protections for SME borrowers are in line with those of mortgage owners. In cases where SME loans are sold by a regulated lender to an unregulated firm, the affected borrower retains the same level of protection as they had prior to sale. These regulatory protections are under the various statutory codes, the consumer protection code, the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, the lending to small and medium enterprise regulations, and the minimum competency code issued by the Central Bank of Ireland.

The transfer of a loan from one entity to another does not change the terms of the contract or the borrower's rights and obligations under the original contract. I will bring the fact that the Deputy has raised the issue to the Minister's attention.