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

I do not know whether Governor Lane or Mr. Sibley have answered the question. I do not know whether they are clued into this at all. Let me explain. I understand what the banks have been doing. On a macro level, they have their big customers. They have worked hard going down to the very smallest of loans so they are almost down to that level now where they have a huge number of loans that are in difficulty. They are not applying the same degree of effort in finding a solution for those loans as they did with the bigger loans further up along the chain. As a result, individuals find themselves in court. They are lay litigants defending against solicitors, barristers and so on, and, until now, the banks have pushed these loans to the courts. There is a huge number of cases before the courts and no effort is being made by the banks once they do this to unravel matters and try to find solutions. These are the clients who come to me and, I am sure, other members of the committee. They are fighting for their homes and trying to make some effort. I do not know whether our guests know how difficult it is to get information from the banks. It is absolutely impossible, and I have seen this myself by dealing with individual cases. One individual asked a particular vulture fund for information last Christmas. That information has still not been provided. In the meantime, the client is just left there wondering about his or her business, home or loan or whatever. It is impossible to deal with the banks. I know I am repeating myself because I have said this before at various meetings, but it is the same story I come up against all the time. It can be seen in the language used in that letter from a bank to a customer. One cannot say what is written is a lie, but it verges on being so. It is a play on words to make the customer feel that the banks are not that bad but that those regulators have them under fierce pressure and they have to sell the borrowers' loans on. That is basically what they are saying. Earlier, we dealt with the culture in the bank. That letter speaks loud and clear to a culture that does not give a damn who is regulating or what is being said. That is a view I have and it is one that I know is shared by people across the country.

I then come to the ICB, now that I have gone through the situation of a loan being sold on to a vulture fund, a client trying to buy it back and the bureau flagging the individual's history. The Central Bank controls the ICB now. Is that correct or is it working within the bank?