Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. I concur with Deputy Donnelly's comment that those who are not compliant ultimately end up facing legal proceedings. I am sure my constituency experience of the matter is repeated the length and breadth of the country. I often find that a certain cohort of the people involved in legal proceedings with whom I have become familiar through my constituency activities are personally incapable of dealing with the machinations of mortgage arrears. They might, for example, have mental incapacity or illiteracy problems. I suspect that the paperwork on mortgage approvals will show that a number of the people who end up in court, having ignored all previous correspondence, were marginal cases in terms of deciding whether they should have been offered mortgages in the first place. Have the banks tried to explore alternative arrangements with the Central Bank that would allow for a final card to be played by approved intermediaries, whomever they might be, to avoid the nuclear option? I appreciate that a cohort of people will come to the table subsequent to being issued with legal proceedings but another cohort will not. Is there room for manoeuvre on that issue?