Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up where Deputy Mairéad Farrell left off there.

So as I am clear on what is being said here, I take from the last exchange the following: a time will come when they have to sell non-performing loans, those loans can be sold to debt collection agencies and that is unlikely to happen until next year. This is one of the stories of this hearing so far. One would not know it to look at the profits of the banks but there is a cost-of-living crisis in this country. Working people and people of low-to-average and even somewhat higher-than-average incomes are under the cosh. They are under the cosh with rising prices in the supermarkets. They will be under the cosh with rising interest rates not too far down the road. It is clearly the case that there are not one or two cases, or one or two dozen. There, inevitably, will be a significant number of customers of their banks, I put it to Mr. Jansen, who will not be able to clear their overdrafts within the timeframe that the bank is allocating to them.

Are we given to understand now that at a certain point next year those loans Ms Howard described as "non-performing loans", will be sold on and that one of Ulster Bank's options is to sell them to debt-collection agencies? Could we have clarification from representatives of both banks on that point?