Mr. Brendan O'Connor:

It becomes an issue to the extent that when we calculate net disposable income, we are looking for the maximum affordability for the mortgage, to prioritise keeping the people in their homes. Quite an amount of income comes out of customers' net income that goes to unsecured creditors. It is difficult, when we are prepared to compromise on the unsecured debt - the nature of the debt itself - when other unsecured creditors do not. Therefore, it is often hard to get a holistic agreement across somebody's totality of debt. In quite a few cases, people do not have a mortgage debt problem, but a personal debt problem. It is the confluence of the two that makes the issue difficult to deal with.