Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to begin by making some observations and asking some questions in this big context. The officials are here to give overview of the banking sector in Ireland. That is their calling card and they have kindly given us a great deal of material - financial details and percentages, etc. - running to over 80 pages. I have tried to bring everyone back to our core responsibility of who devises the policies and strategies of the Bank of Ireland group. I have made the point that most of the court of directors are unrepresentative of Irish households and short on experience of Ireland, in terms of its finance, economy and demographics and everything that accompanied the collapse of the economy. It is easy to be remote and distant and not to see the impact of what happens when one is in a boardroom and how it translates in people's homes. The figures show that for every household or customer mortgage in distress, the lives of at least three people are being ripped apart. That is the average, but sometimes four or more are affected. It is a serious matter and up to those who understand the machinery of balance sheets, portfolios and ledgers and how it happened to deal with it. I applaud them for getting the group's loan-to-deposit ratio down to 111%, which is the right figure for the group.