Mr. Jerry Beades:

The receivership area is the wild west. It is unregulated, unaccountable theft across the board. If one looks at other jurisdictions, New Zealand and Australia have introduced legislation in this regard. When I was preparing for this meeting yesterday I came across a KPMG report which reiterated almost everything the Deputy said in the parliamentary debates in Australia and New Zealand. Those countries have introduced regulation because they had this carry-on seven to ten years ago.

The receivership area is mostly unknown to people. I happen to be very lucky in so far as I have a personal friend for 30 years who is a receiver, so I was able to gain expert knowledge. He would be a low profile receiver but he has carried out over 700 receiverships in 30 years. What has taken place is astonishing. It is an area even the legal profession does not understand. If it is a company, it is recorded in the Companies Registration Office, but we refer to the private receiverships.

Parliamentary questions have been tabled on this issue. Deputy Pearse Doherty might have asked some in the past, as we communicated with him on these issues. The Central Bank has replied that it does not keep statistics. These are the private receiverships. What happens, effectively, is that they are appointed on the mortgage document. When people sign a mortgage document, they sign away their rights and give the bank the power to appoint a receiver if anything goes wrong. The document varies from bank to bank and from receiver to receiver. It is unregulated.