Mr. Richard Woodhouse:

The driving home at night is the bit that concerns me because unlike a commercial real estate loan, where there is a building that will stay in the same spot in perpetuity and its value will go up and down, for a cash-flow business, the staff will either create value or destroy it.

Deputy Twomey's asked how we look at the restructuring of these companies. We are different from the other banks for several reasons but our strategy remains the same. We are different because the bank tended to lend all of the money; if it liked a transaction it would do 100%. When looking at Bank of Ireland or AIB's portfolio, there are more syndicated loans and other players. Often we would also provide mezzanine finance. The bank's concentration in each investment is much higher. The fact the assets drive home at night gives rise to enormous risk in realising the best long-term economic value for the shareholder. As a consequence, the preferred platform is a consensual restructuring wherever we can get that done. Going through the courts and other recovery mechanisms is extremely costly and a consensual outcome is by far the best, and dealing sensitively with the employees and the management of the company is how we stimulate the best possible bid from a third party buyer.

Coming back to Deputy Higgins's earlier question, albeit phrased differently for residential mortgages, many of these companies on our books were financed and constructed at the height of the boom and the level of debt in those companies is unsustainably high. Part of the creativity we want to bring to bear is the "right-sizing" of that debt, not writing it off, to make the company of capable of sustaining a portion of the debt and packaging the company in a manner that will allow a buyer to realise precisely what he is buying, having certainty about staff and debt levels and an appreciation of the forward look of the company. We utilise experts, often accountancy firms which help us with an independent business review on a particular product, and the solutions are, therefore, both bespoke and discreet. The collusion that was asked about earlier does not arise. We must be nimble and sympathetic to each case and operate within those parameters to achieve the best price on sale.