Mr. Matthew Elderfield:

I have said that the pace of the arrears work-out has been frustratingly slow. Professor Honohan and I were surprised by it. One core skill of banking is lending but another core skill of banking is being able to get money in. That collection side was very weak, having looked at the banks and their operational capability. We examined this aspect and BlackRock examined it as part of the last engagement. We found that the number of staff doing collections and managing mortgage arrears was rather low and that the expertise levels were rather low. The systems were very weak too. I heard some particular feedback. Someone told me that a staff member would have to interrogate three or four different systems, pull all the documents together, write them up and then get ready to call Elderfield. All that would take 20 minutes of preparation time. Then Elderfield would not be there when called. Then he would move on to the next case, which also involved 20 minutes of note collation and preparation and another official would be called who was not there either. That was not very efficient and they have had to work with big systems. It was frustrating that it was not in place but there has been enough time to improve the operational capability. Now is the time to reach these targets.