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

I am not going to get any information out of the witnesses today. That is clear. We have asked them to reflect on it. We understand that things change as the bank moves along. I am just asking the witnesses to understand that at present I am sure there are lots of businesses and farmers all over the country, some of which have met here, that are drawing attention to their plight. I ask the witnesses to understand that. The bank has not issued any public statement. That may be the difficulty because now everyone is in a sweat over what is happening to their loan, what is going on and we are being contacted. We are trying to deal with this in a calm manner. We are asking the bank to be as constructive as it has been with the other issues that are before us and perhaps come back to us. The witnesses used the word "ambition". Could the bank use its ambition to resolve some of those difficulties within that basket of loans and use its ambition in terms of iCare and others to resolve some of the individual issues?

There is a banking union. Members of the Dáil and the Seanad are trying to find solutions to all sorts of problems, as are the witnesses. There are differences of opinion between one bank and another as to how to deal with businesses but all of the problems are central. The problems right across the board are all similar. With all the brains that are in, or left in, the banks, is there is no way that the union could not devise some way of dealing with these loans without putting them out to vulture funds? Could it encourage some mechanism by which a charity, housing authority or other organisation could be involved or where even something relative to business loans could be taken into some sort of holding area where all of the banks would have the same strategy and approach and deal with the matter in as human a way as possible?