, 000. banks were allowed to issue up to 15 % of their primary dwelling home ( pdh ) loans above these ltv limits on an annual basis. we apply a more stringent limit to the purchase of houses for investment purposes and here the limit is 70 % ltv, with up to 10 % of new lending on this basis allowed above the limit. * * * at the time of introduction of the measures, we committed to regular reviews of their impact and effectiveness. this we believe represents good practice, and mitigates against any potential inaction bias. it is also consistent with the commitment for quarterly reviews of counter - cyclical capital buffer ( ccyb ) settings and annual reviews of the identification of, and buffer setting for, other systemically important institutions ( o - siis ) as prescribed in crr / crd iv. the review process was overseen by a new macroprudential measures committee and involved a range of analytical projects looking at issues such as borrower impact, the early performance of the measures against the stated objectives, and any side effects, including in relation to impact on the rental market, or leakages. to enhance transparency and understanding, research outputs on all these issues and records of the meetings are published on the central bank ’ s website. 7 in addition, feedback from external stakeholders was gathered through a call for evidence on the impact of the measures. submissions were received from a variety of property and construction industry stakeholders, financial services firms and groups, political parties, government departments, academics and individual members of the public. the submissions were a very useful input for our review, and were also published on the central bank of ireland ’ s website. it is obviously the case that it was very early after their initial introduction to be able to find much causal impact from the introduction of the measures, but still our review threw up some interesting findings and resulted in some changes to the design of our policies. we saw a reduction in high ltv mortgages and simulations from loan - loss forecasting models indicate that resilience of banks and households increased. we found that the introduction of the measures had an immediate and material impact in moderating price expectations. actual price increases also moderated although it is more difficult to ascribe any causality to our measures. in general, we found that the overall framework of the measures is appropriate and effective in meeting the objectives. nonetheless, following our 2016 review some changes to these parameters were applied to improve the sustainability and effectiveness

respect to these instruments include whether there should be a more coordinated european framework for their introduction. * * * communication borrower - based measures such as loan - to - value and debt - service - to - income, debt - to - income or loan - to - income ratios have been introduced in a number of european member states over recent years. prior to the financial crisis, these type of measures were deployed in mainly non - european countries ( including south korea, hong kong, singapore and others ) and there is empirical evidence regarding their potential effectiveness in reducing risks to financial stability. 2 the 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches evidence however is rarely clear cut and the impact of such measures can vary depending on, among other things, characteristics of national housing markets and the position in the financial cycle. whilst subject to intense debate, when we introduced the mortgage measures in 2015, the legacy of the crisis was still at the forefront of many people ’ s minds. this, to some degree, facilitated the subsequent broad societal understanding and acceptance of the measures. our two primary objectives when introducing these measures were, first, enhancing the resilience of households and banks to economic and financial shocks and, second, reducing in a structural way the pro - cyclicality that can be inherent in housing and credit markets by capping the amount of high ltv and lti mortgages allowed at any time. however, while we have emphasised in all our public communications that it is not our objective to target house prices, this has proven in fact to be a very difficult message to get across to the public. underlying much of the public discourse on the mortgage rules is the central issue of affordability. in this context, it has been challenging to explain ( i ) that house prices are determined by a complex interaction of supply and demand side factors, ( ii ) that although our measures may impact on prices – that is not their primary goal, and ( iii ) that housing market policy issues like taxes, building measures and the shortage of supply of housing for buyers and renters are outside of our remit. our view is that not only would it be extremely difficult to choose an appropriate target for house prices but also extremely difficult to hit this target. financial sector regulations cannot address these issues, which must instead be addressed by other targeted policies. 3 to banks, we have also had to carefully explain that these are limits, not targets. we continue to monitor their risk appetites in this regard. figure 1 shows the recent history