Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Operations and Functioning of AIB: Discussion
2:05 pm
Mr. David Duffy:
In regard to what we are going to say to the customer, we understand and have a lot of sympathy with much of the difficulty people are incurring in their personal lives and the debts they have. That goes from a small single home owner family to more complex people with businesses and buy-to-lets. We have an obligation to understand what debt is sustainable. That is at the heart of the issue - what is an affordable level of debt for those people and not what was the debt. How do we address that with individuals? In our restructuring plan, about which we talked, our intention is to address that with all of those people. SMEs will be 100% tackled by the second quarter of 2013. We are involved with 33,000 homes and are trying to cover that entire spectrum of distress in the same period. Can we get answers for those people in distress and return them to a lifestyle that has affordability as a theme rather than distress? That is the simple message.
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