Mr. Paul Joyce:

The Deputy has mentioned quite a number of issues.

With regard to receivership, section 101 of the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act allows a mortgagee or lender to install a receiver once there is an act of default, as defined under the legislation, but the powers of the receiver were not defined or developed in that piece of legislation. There are serious concerns about the actions of receivers and the lack of control over what they do.

Equally, as we have said, the code of conduct on mortgage arrears only applies to regulated entities. It only applies to entities regulated by the Central Bank, of which Danske is one. However, the code is not even a statutory instrument. The code of conduct on mortgage arrears is not even signed into law by the Minister for Finance, so what admissability does it have in legal proceedings, even if one had to follow it?

With regard to debt factoring or debt sale, which is a feature of a recession meeting a personal debt crisis, we are seeing a lot of it at the moment. As I understand it, the Government's legislative programme proposes a sale of loan books to unregulated third parties Bill to cater for the sale of loan books by regulated financial institutions to unregulated financial institutions, but it is not expected to be published until 2015.