Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. Unfortunately, I was also moonlighting at another committee, trying to be in both places at the same time, which is a difficult job as we all know.

I have been listening to the discourse and I can sympathise with both opinions, different as they may appear to be. As the Minister knows, I have repeatedly engaged with numerous lending institutions over the past ten or 12 years regarding the way their customers were treated and so on. To be fair, some treated customers reasonably well in the circumstances; others did not. Some were smug and arrogant and went about their business with a single-mindedness which annoyed me and which was certainly not in accordance with best practice.

I can also understand what the Chairman is saying. It would appear that Ireland is not a nice place to be as far as banking is concerned. While a number of financial and lending institutions rushed into this country in the heat of the Celtic tiger era, many of them, either with or in the wake of the Celtic tiger, escaped again. Some did so have done an amount of damage to the economy by undercutting and undermining the existing banks or by encouraging them to go down the road of unsafe lending. The theory was there was no such thing as unsafe lending or unsafe borrowing. However, there is no absolute guarantee in respect of any lending and there is a duty and responsibility on our lending institutions to keep that in mind.