Mr. Edmund Honohan:

It is not really for me to comment but it seems to me that the summary judgment process, about which I have written, is one which puts the lay litigant at an extreme disadvantage. I have actually communicated with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission on this. I have written to the commission and told it that it needs to address the rules of court which render the lay litigant ineffective. Lay litigants cannot effectively participate. They appear before me at the earliest stages, not in the Commercial Court but for ordinary debts of less than €1 million and ask me what I mean by an affidavit. They ask what an affidavit is and I have to tell them what is it. Then they go away and produce an affidavit which is rubbish, containing stuff that somebody in a pub told them to include. Then I say, "Tell me now what your story is. How did this come to pass? What did you borrow the money for?". We go on at length and eventually I will say, "That is very interesting. Put that in an affidavit". I do not think that happens in the Commercial Court. I do not think there is a debtor-friendly or lay litigant-friendly approach taken. One of the difficulties with debtor-friendly or lay litigant-friendly approaches - I have heard comments on this from both sides - is that a judge will say, "I did my best. I explained what the nature of the procedure was. I explained to him how he might develop a point here, there and everywhere. Then I turned around and ruled against him and I was told I was a bastard but I was doing my job - to try and explain where he was at and what he needed to do. So, eventually, I give up". This is what one judge told me. The impression given in the Commercial Court and elsewhere, including the High Court, is that big money talks.

Omnia praesumunturis a legal maxim we have whereby everything is presumed to have been correctly done. That is certainly a presumption which the courts applied to the banks' paperwork but I have found it not to be true.