John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Is that not what the banks did? They took people's money fraudulently. The banks made people pay back money to them for which they were not entitled to ask. On request, they did not return that money. After a number of years, we could describe it as the bank stealing the money from the people and not returning it. Is that not the basic position? It is not a question of legislation, morals or anything else. It is a question of grand theft from thousands of people and the money remains in the banks.

Let us just look at the human side of that for one second. Professor Lane spoke earlier about how the banks behave and about what they are doing. As for the woman who wrote to the committee who had three children, two of whom have Asperger's; the woman who wrote that a whole ten years were gone from her life; the man who had a stroke; the houses that were repossessed; and the 79 buy-to-let properties which were lost, how can Professor Lane stand over any of it? Why can he not tell the banks involved in those individual cases, for example, that they stole these people's money and demand they are put back on the correct payments, whether the cases date from 2013 or before?