Mr. John Trethowan:

On the parking of the debts, it is not happening in a widespread way but when it was last here the troika asked for the temporary forbearance to move into more long-term restructuring. Currently, people have been turning over the forbearance waiting for better times to come but the troika has said it wants to see a business in that position, which is struggling, restructured over five to seven years with a proper programme. That will mean that those legacy debts will have to be addressed one way or another.

It is not the job of the Credit Review Office to talk about debt forgiveness. We try to make a deal without recommending that the bank write down debt but the reality is that some level of forgiveness by all of the banks will have to be required on the way forward to deal with just the legacy debts.

On the reduction, the global economy is awash with cash with businesses paying down debt, and not just in Ireland. It is not an Irish phenomenon; it is a situation across the world. There is approximately €15 trillion in cash on businesses' balance sheets across the world. Businesses are not borrowing; they are repaying.

On directors' loans, again, one of the features we see in many appeals is that when we get to the capital account there is a big chunk in it with the directors' loans. It may be that there is some capacity remaining out there but we are probably in year 5 of these challenging times for domestic demand, turnover and profitability. The capability of directors to continue to fund businesses from their own resources may be getting strained.

The other aspect that would worry me is the trade debts in some business balance sheets. As bank lending has been tight for some businesses they have borrowed from their suppliers and suppliers have been willing to lend because they want to increase their turnover, but once a trade debt is taken onto someone's books they become the banker for that other business. If they go down, they have a bad debt on their books. It is not unknown for us to see a good business brought down just by bad trade debts and therefore it is something about which to be cautious.