Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My general point is that this highlights how flawed this process has been from the beginning. Yesterday, one of the pillar banks informed the joint committee that issuing 6,000 letters telling its customers to engage or it would go down the road of legal action constitutes a sustainable solution to their mortgage difficulties. Today, the second pillar bank informs us that it does not consider correspondence containing a legal threat to be a sustainable solution under the definition in the Central Bank's mortgage arrears targets programme. This highlights the flawed nature of the process from the beginning.

The vague definition of a sustainable solution in the arrears targets programme published in March last gives the banks the final say in that the definition provides that the bank must be satisfied that the arrangement provides a sustainable solution. Allied Irish Banks is satisfied that issuing a threatening legal letter is a sustainable solution, whereas Bank of Ireland takes a different view. The joint committee is trying to make some sense of all this. I would feel sorry for the Central Bank were it not the culpable party in that it framed the terms of reference in the first instance. That is essentially the position from my perspective. It is farcical that the two main banks in the State have been given a definition which they can interpret completely differently, as they have done. More than 70% of the so-called sustainable offers made by Allied Irish Banks were legal letters which Bank of Ireland states do not constitute a sustainable solution.