Mr. Ger Deering:

The only part that would be an issue for us would be the conduct of the bank during that process. We certainly would not be able to state that a person should have been given a loan. We are not in the space of assessing people's repayment capacity. The Chairman is referring to the Credit Review Office.

As I understand it, it makes a recommendation that the bank should pay that money. The significant difference is that our findings are legally binding and can only be appealed to the High Court but we do not second-guess the commercial discretion of the bank. In other words, we do not decide that somebody should have been given a loan but we could look at the process to see if everything was considered and whether the way they were dealt with by the bank was reasonable.