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

It is that but I would go further. They should be informed that legislation pertaining to them and which could affect them in a very substantial way is now being discussed. They might have views. We just discussed whether it might be the case that Bank of Ireland would deal differently with mortgages than ICS or whether another third party purchaser might deal even more differently with them. We can speculate on that.

Would it not be fair and reasonable that we should hear from the mortgage holders, or at least that they should know about this and have the opportunity to express their views in the pre-legislative discussion because they might tell us building societies have quite a different regime in terms of how they deal with mortgage holders than banks?

Building societies have quite a different regime to banks in terms of how they deal with mortgage holders. ICS might tell us. I do not know enough about ICS to say it but part of the reason a distinction was made between banks and building societies in the Central Bank Act 1971, which precluded them from selling on or transferring those assets, was precisely because of the unique character of building societies because they operated on a different philosophy, which one might argue is a slightly more benign, less commercially profit-orientated approach.