Dr. Shaen Corbet:

There were many questions. I will do my best to go through them quickly. Deputy Byrne referred to excessive pessimism. Our supporting document presents the figures of the UK income contingent loan system in the context of student loan companies. The information is contained in table 1 on page 14. Let us consider one of the first years when there were more than 250,000 students. For example, 2003 has 271,000 students. We have combined all the figures from Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England in respect of that cohort. At present we have a figure of 42.5% repayment. That is quite successful. It is a good system at that stage. What we have in this system is 29.2% above the threshold who continue to pay at present. We also have 13.2% below threshold. What we are seeing across the board is that 57.5% have not paid the money some 13 years later. That is on the record from the UK. That is the estimate.

I want to touch briefly on one point that Dr. Larkin made. I thought it was incredible when I discovered it myself. The Chairman made a comment about the bailiffs and sheriffs coming in the door. There needs to be a whip at some point to get debt back in terms of the banks and what actually happens.

I do not mean that we send sheriffs and people to knock on the front door. If one openly tells someone who owes one money that one will not chase the debt, it is a big issue. I do not know what strategy to adopt there. If someone is on the west coast of America and they do not respond to letters from the Irish Government, it will be up to the Government to go to them to get the money back. That is a big issue. We have seen an issue develop within the New Zealand ICL system to the tune of NZ$1 billion, which is a considerable sum. It has been developing over time. Our submission includes figures for the age of overdue payments and they show that for the periods of between one to two years, two to five years and longer than five years, there is more than NZ$700 million in long-term arrears without any response. It was reported in December 2016 that a crackdown on student loan borrowers identified 57,000 New Zealand students living in Australia where two-thirds were in default. These people simply were ignoring contact from the New Zealand Government. That is a big issue.

We were asked about the next crisis. After Brexit, for example, there could be a disastrous situation if an ICL system was brought in with that amount of instability in the Irish economic environment.