Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No; I am bringing matters to a conclusion. I thank Mr. Boucher, Mr. McLoughlin, Mr. Mason and Mr. Farrell for coming before the committee. This has been an ongoing process and every time we have requested the bank to come before us since the target measures were put in place, it has done so. We appreciate the documentation provided to the committee, which arrived early so that we could assimilate it and compare it to information received from other banks. This is an evolving process and, as with some of the other banks, the prescriptions laid out in the Keane report were not seen by the Central Bank, the Department of Finance and the banks as the definitive means of unravelling or dealing with this difficulty. Other resolution processes have come to the fore as we examined the issue.

Difficulties with some of the resolution processes seem to be apparent, such as the mortgage-to-rent issue, and these have been repeated in recent days.

It is worthy of acknowledgement that in the case of each of the institutions which have come before the committee, while there may have been robust challenges, differences of opinion and perhaps some strong questions with regard to how individual banks are approaching individual things, it is testament to the work of the committee members that there has also been a response by the banks to issues that have been raised by us. In the case of Bank of Ireland and the issue of the split mortgages, in particular the variable-rate case, while members may have different views about it, the bank representatives have responded to the issues.

One thing noted in today's engagement was that the initial letters of correspondence to customers are not being counted as part of the resolution processes. That was a major bone of contention at the committee the last time around and I welcome the fact that the Bank of Ireland figures presented today did not include these as a means of stepping up the figures.

I will be advising the institutions that have come before us - I imagine it is being done anyway because they have been watching proceedings - to examine the transcripts and see what is being debated back and forth among everyone. While we are looking for consistency, I recognise that we cannot have the same approach throughout all the banks and that it is not necessarily going to be the case. We are looking for solutions on a case-by-case basis and the last thing we need on a case-by-case basis is a set prescription as a panacea to all the difficulties that exist.

I strongly call on the representatives of Bank of Ireland as the resolution practices evolve and as there is a tweaking and a tinkering of approaches, to let this committee know about the developments, because if there are improvements to the system we would like to hear about them and we may well be in a position to welcome such measures at times.