Mr. Lorcan O'Connor:

I hope I have jotted then all down and, if not, please raise them again. The first set of questions had to do with the lending practices of the banks.

From an insolvency perspective, I encourage creditors and debtors to always look forward rather than back. If one has a bad loan, it needs to be fixed. The reasons that gave rise to that loan going bad are - to a large extent - irrelevant. We do not look into the specific lending practices that gave rise to an arrears issue, but the personal insolvency practitioner deals with it in a way that returns the debtor to solvency.

In the context of engagement by the banks, I would have to say that it has been positive. We have been dealing with banks very closely in developing protocols that encapsulate the small print and the terms and conditions around our arrangements. We have had very constructive engagements with banks and all of other stakeholders, such as debtor advocacy groups, practitioners, MABS and the Courts Service, in the development of those protocols. We have also published statistics around the number of arrangements that failed to be delivered by personal insolvency practitioners when banks have chosen to vote against an arrangement. This pertains to Deputy Durkan's first question. Our statistics show that there is close to 80% acceptance rates for our arrangements. This would always be to the satisfaction of the debtor because it is the debtor who tables the proposal in the first instance. This is perhaps also linked to the so-called bank veto question. The relevant legislation was passed at the end of last summer. The Deputy is right to say that the court rules had to be developed to back it up but it went live at the end of November. We have a number of cases in the system of which only small number have come out the other end. As far as we are aware, there are just short of 50 court reviews in the system. These are 50 cases where a personal insolvency practitioner is saying to the court, "Judge, we do not think the banks or the creditors were acting reasonably and we would like you to review it. If you agree with us, impose the solution over the will of the banks." So far 11 cases-----