Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry to cut across Mr. Bell but I am mindful of the time factor. Various proposals are currently being considered by the Government on accelerating the pace of the mortgage crisis. It has gone on in Ireland far longer than it has gone on anywhere else. I tabled a motion in Dáil last night that raised a few possibilities. Can I get a quick response from the bank as to whether it would support the following four proposals? I will go through them and Mr. Brown can then respond to them. The first proposal is to move the bankruptcy period from three years to one year, at least for a term-limited time until the mortgage crisis is resolved. The second is the provision of financial expertise, be it a personal insolvency practitioner, PIP, or a personal financial adviser, to those who cannot afford them. The third is the provision of legal representation. What struck me about the process in the Circuit Court recently was that the borrowers who did turn up did not have a lawyer. Borrowers were not turning up with legal representation in court. The fourth proposal is a recommendation from the committee last year that the restructures offered by any lender would be stress-tested in the same way that new lending would be stress-tested. Can I get Mr. Brown's response to those four proposals?