Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I accept that is Deputy Catherine Murphy's view. The position that we are in is that we have to follow the legislation, as enacted by the Oireachtas, to get the maximum amount for the assets. On the other side, we cannot give the assets away for free because we do not own the underlying properties. They are owned by debtors. If we did give them away, the Deputy would be saying we were not chasing the debtors to repay all of their loans. What we do is if somebody has a loan and they have property, and the value of that property is set by the market and the market pays that, that is the amount that will go towards repayment of the loan. In most instances it will not repay all of the loan but in some instances it will. We have to operate the way that we are set up. I have my personal views on housing. It is very expensive. I was looking at some statistics yesterday with one of my colleagues. If we look at the last two years, in 2016, based on statistics from the CSO, the income ratio to buy a house in Dublin was 3.2. In 2018, it has gone up to 3.4.