Mr. Justice John Hedigan:

When we launched on 15 April, one of the comments I made was that very bad things have happened. We have been in very dark places. There were times when we thought we would not make it as a country and an economy, but we managed to come through. I said at the time, and I still believe, that in respect of all the trouble we had, which we should not have had, right up to the present time with tracker mortgage scandals, I would like to think that that is yesterday's story and that today and tomorrow's story is what we are doing.

I share the Deputy's scepticism. He might be more sceptical than me, although from what he said not much more. However, it came into existence, and I am sufficiently cynical to agree with the rationale the Deputy put forward for the reason it came into existence, but here we are and we have a pretty powerful group of people. Some of the heaviest hitters on consumer advocacy, particularly regarding banks, are on that board. We would be very difficult to ignore at this stage. The banks have had to create something, and we are it. I have great hope that we will be able to effect considerable change. Am I happy with the way things are now? I can only say that all of the bank people I have met so far, from the highest to the lowest, seem to be very committed to the project in which we are involved.

In the course of my preparation for the selection process, I read of events around the world. I studied very carefully what the UK Banking Standards Board was doing, and it was impressive. I looked at what the Dutch were doing. Apparently, they are the leaders in this area of cultural change in the banking world. I looked at what was happening in Hong Kong. I read the Australia Royal Commission report, which is scarifying, about how the banks were operating in that country. I read what the people in New Zealand are doing, and I have read the reports from the New York Federal Reserve Bank's annual conference concerning matters of this sort. That is why I said that effecting cultural change in banks is an ideal whose day has come, both here in Ireland and around the globe, and it does appear to be so.

So far, I have reason to be cautiously optimistic. I am assured by the chief executives and the chairmen of the banks that they fully support this endeavour. I have been told that, in effect, anything that we reasonably need in terms of financial backing we will get to do this.

All the staff that I have met seemed to be very enthusiastic. I refer to the workshops we have had, especially in respect of bereaved customers. There are 50,000 bereaved customers across the banking industry every year and a great deal of trouble occurs in that respect. We want to have one standard level of care for all of those people so that, for instance, they do not have to keep ringing different people and explaining again that their husband or wife has just died, or much worse. When we met, three people from our board volunteered to be the nucleus of that working group. Each of the banks sent their people along who were expert in that area. It was a truly uplifting discussion. The sheer vigour and enthusiasm of everyone and the knowledge of the people who were there about the problems that arise in cases of bereavement was very impressive. They have gone away to work on programmes to ensure that there will be a common standard of care. We will be making an announcement on that very soon.

I have good reason to be optimistic, but I have occasionally referred to the Russian proverb Ronald Reagan quoted to Mikhail Gorbachev during the strategic arms limitation talks: "Trust but verify."