Arthur Spring (Kerry North-West Limerick, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am of the opinion that many of these losses are essentially unavoidable under vanilla-style banking. However, when parking part of a loan and applying an interest rate to it, one is ultimately putting the debtor on the line forever and a day. If one were to apply logical banking terminology to this, one would not see a person being treated in the way that Bank of Ireland, in particular, is treating people. AIB seems to have more of a conscience in regard to writing down debt and trying to achieve sustainability. We have seen some statistics suggesting 194 deals have been done to date.

My generation include those who are struggling to pay mortgages and those who cannot pay them. More than 30,000 people are over two years in arrears at the moment. Any capital that has been provided to the banks has a roll-over period and I presume that it has been administered through the Central Bank. Is the Government in a position to attach conditions to that roll-over period? I want to see that €2 billion being used for the purposes of debt write-down. I do not want to see it coming back into the central Government. Yet all mortgage holders will carry the can while the banks' share prices are growing. The corollary of that is that big borrowers who ended up in NAMA got massive write-downs. It is totally inequitable so I wonder if we can put an appendage to the roll-over period of that capital.