Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Boucher and his team for coming in. I agree with him as opposed to Deputy Ó Ríordáin that we do not really need gestures. We need real action from the bank not just in terms of hard cash, although that is one side of it. The major issue is whether we can get the tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the country as a whole and the tens of thousands with whom Bank of Ireland is dealing who are in dire distress and unable or barely able to pay their mortgages out of this hole and what Bank of Ireland is doing to help them out of a hole it helped dig for them. What I do not get from Bank of Ireland in particular or any of the banks is any sense that it has a responsibility to take a hit for what it did to put those people into a hole. What Mr. Boucher is really describing is that Bank of Ireland is seeking to squeeze every single cent it can out of every single one of its mortgage account holders. The bank will chase them for every last cent, even if they are forced to give the house back to it in a so-called voluntary surrender. The bank will hound them for every cent regardless of whether they do a so-called restructure or hand back their home. Is there any talk of write-down, which is what the bank should be doing to acknowledge its role in creating this mess in the first place?