Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It has been interesting listening to the contributions made today and to hear that the AIB team is holding board meetings at branches throughout the country and actively seeking face-to-face meetings with customers. This is all very positive and it is good to hear staff in both loan and asset management are being retrained. These initiatives and others mentioned here this afternoon give the impression AIB is actually rebuilding the bank, almost from the ground up. Clearly, some huge problems were discovered when this team took over at AIB. If it is the situation that significant internal restructuring is being undertaken and that the team must go right to the ground level to do that, is it not a bit premature to talk about getting investors, particularly if there are structural problems and problems with loan management to be dealt with.

One of the issues discussed here, tracker mortgages, which amount to approximately €20 billion, make up a sizeable proportion of the existing loans. These will be loss makers for a number of years, not to mention the buy to let loans, which are significant loss makers. Also, there is €5.7 billion of impaired speculative loans, mainly land. Almost €5 billion of that amount could be written off as there has been discounting of up to 90% on that type of loan. That is another €5 billion loss, before we even start drilling down into the issue of arrears.

The bank is facing huge problems, yet the delegates are talking about seeking to attract investors, almost like they are preparing for a sale. I wonder whether that is a little premature.

The delegates spoke about building sustainable profits and balancing competing interests. On the one hand there is the shareholder interest, which is our interest because the taxpayer is heavily involved. On the other hand, however, is the debt restructuring issue and the need for some type of solution for small and medium-sized businesses and householders in serious arrears. The delegates spoke a great deal about restructuring, but the question that arises in this regard is why there is such resistance to debt forgiveness. Is it because the bank is of the view that there is no capacity within the system at this time to engage in a process of examining customers' debts, assets and income with a view possibly to writing off at least a portion of their debt? Or is it simply the case that there is a general policy of opposition to debt forgiveness in any form across all the banks? Going from what we heard from the IBRC delegates this morning and on previous occasions from representatives of other banks, one might conclude that the latter is the case and that there is a collective strong resistance to any write-off of debt. It is one of the issues that is constantly raised with public representatives.

The other major issue we are hearing about is the difficulty of obtaining loans. In fact, what we are hearing outside these Houses does not correspond to what the delegates are saying in this meeting today. Every time I speak to people at events, particularly business events, I hear very detailed stories about how they were refused a loan. There is a need to clarify what is happening in this regard.

I conclude by voicing my appreciation to Mr. Duffy for making himself and his team so accessible to us. That is a very positive development and it allows us to redirect queries to them with ease.