A functioning market should deliver a sufficient supply of appropriately priced mortgages to support house prices that are in line with the fundamentals of the economy, without driving credit fuelled house price bubbles. It is evident that the Irish mortgage market has many of these aspects. Indeed, there has been a significant strengthening across all these areas in the last decade or so.
However, it is also clear that dysfunction still exists – and continues to affect the functioning of the mortgage market in Ireland today. I will turn to these shortly, but before I do, it is worth considering briefly, by way of context, the Irish housing market more broadly. The Irish Housing Market.