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

Dr. Hunt might let us know how this is communicated. The other issue with Dr. Hunt's opening statement is that he talks about some of the committee members being strongly opposed to the sale of NPL portfolios and so on, particularly to the vulture funds, and I am one of those. I appreciate what AIB is doing. I want to acknowledge that I understand the efforts that it is making.

However, the customers who are in difficulty did not walk into it on their own, they were accompanied by banks. People went to banks to seek a loan for a normal house and came out with a loan for a mansion and two cars which they had no possibility of ever being able to repay. Dr. Hunt might say that the bank has an onus to look after its general customer base but there is also an obligation on the bank to accept responsibility and admit it was part of the problem.

To go back to my previous point, the bank must drill down heavily into those loans and try and assist the customers affected to get back to performing in some way again because we are losing a generation of entrepreneurs. Many families feel they have been completely beaten up by the banks and are trying to recover from that. I would like to see much more being done by the banks. I am not asking that people would be freed from their loans but there is pain involved. The other side of the story that would sit in beside the statement that Dr. Hunt made is that these people were not entirely to blame.