Mr. Colm ? Raghallaigh:

My understanding is that the Senator is correct. There is a unique mandate reference for every direct debit authorisation that a customer sets up with a direct debit originator, which is Electric Ireland in our case. My understanding of the switching code is the customer's current bank can supply him or her with a list of direct debits. In the case of Electric Ireland, we could certainly look into it but the unique reference in our case is the customer account number. It is the most useful unique identifier in a customer case in respect of setting up a mandate or updating bank details with Electric Ireland.