Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We appreciate that and we have had discussions on different legislation about why that figure of €3.5 million exists. It probably shines a spotlight on the difficulty of accessing the courts by commercial individuals or those who have a turnover of more than that amount.

The whistleblower in Ulster Bank was a former executive of the bank operating here in Ireland. He claims that the banks put a business into a special unit. A business would be moved along to another section of the bank and overnight all the credit terms would be changed, which is similar to the story mentioned by Ms Lavin. He says that eventually the business ran out of cash, the assets were seized and sold on, and all the money went to Ulster Bank's bottom line. I have to stress that there was no default even likely in many cases and what went on was simply outrageous.

Ms Lavin talked about the difficulty of accessing the courts. On my proposal, the committee has written to the Central Bank asking it to investigate these areas. It has informed us in correspondence that it is engaged with Ulster Bank, yet it is not willing to have an independent investigation. Has Ms Lavin's organisation been able to reach out to the former executive of Ulster Bank? Obviously, he or she was not named in this newspaper report. The information that he or she may hold could be key to forcing the Central Bank to investigate - with the evidence of the Tomlinson report and the evidence presented by individuals - if it is not willing to carry out an investigation of its own volition. The whistleblower may be the key to tipping it into acting in this regard.