Ms Josephine Feehily:

The debt write-off, strangely enough, is not always that old because most years between 70% and 80% of it concerns liquidations, examinerships or ceased trading arrangements. It tends to be current and not aged. We have an automatic write-off programme every year for small amounts. They can be quite old, but they are tiny amounts. The average figure in the last automatic write-off run was €13. I am ignoring it for this purpose. The write-off tends to be relatively current, but the issue is what we will do with all of this. The oldest part has generally been put on record when an appeal is concluded and then it starts to be subject to case work. We ask for the money. In the current climate when an old debt is put on record after exhausting the appeals processes, quite often the underlying money in the economic transaction is gone. Certainly, in that instance, the write-off will increase for these cases. We tend in our simple minds to think of them as current because it is only available to us once it is released from the appeals process.