Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the level of honesty and the depth of Mr. Roebben's response. It was not what we get from everyone. Clearly, banks by their nature have corporate governance responsibilities to make money on behalf of their shareholders and so on, but not at the expense of vulnerable customers.

That is where it often happens where people are sold products that are less than appropriate to them or their stage in life, for example, giving older people loans when their capacity to repay is going to diminish rather than increase or, equally, selling people very risky products at a time in their life when they should be reducing risk. To be fair, the KBC representatives have acknowledged this. There is always a dilemma between trying to make money while acknowledging that the company is in a relationship with the customer which is very important. The customer must be at the centre of everything each day. Sometimes that might mean making less money. The bank is writing to customers about their loans but that balance is there and it is important KBC acknowledged it.

I draw the representatives' attention to question No. 5 in the questionnaire, which relates to voluntary and legal surrender. They have taken us through the different voluntary and legal surrender cases, such a customer selling a property, voluntary sale proposals, voluntary surrender proposals and so on, right down to receiver proceedings. How is the appointment of receivers to private dwelling homes, PDH, working?