Mr. David Duffy:

It is very hard to be precise. To be clear on my definition, I was not referring to those who were afraid to co-operate but to those who had made a conscious decision to pay an alternative debt which may be unsecured versus the secured debt. The indicative points are significant. When one is two years down the road of non-co-operation, 50% re-engage when one issues advice of a potential legal process and a further 10% come back and pay the full capital and interest on their outstanding mortgage, without variation, when one issues legal proceedings - that is, when one takes the first step in a convoluted process. The figure the Deputy seeks is in the order of magnitude of the actual percentage of people who come back after two years of not paying and engage in full payment.

To refine the Deputy's earlier point, we have been explicit with the Financial Regulator and everybody else that we do not want to send out a single legal letter. That will not serve us or anybody else well. If one does not engage for two or three years, one ends up in that position. What we did after listening to Members of the Oireachtas at our previous meeting was to look at motivation. At that time, Deputy Spring raised the issue of fear. We contacted consumer advocacy groups requesting that they ask those who were not willing to come to the bank to please approach the one champion consumers have, namely, the group that is noisy about being their champion. This approach has had considerable traction. Our objective through this and two other initiatives we have taken is to eliminate legal letters by providing alternative means of addressing the issue and bringing it back to the table. We are seeing engagement in that space.