Mr. Padraic Kissane:

I might answer it in a different way. There should not be a difference. That is what Mr. Burgess is trying to challenge. The reasons a mortgage is sold are outside of the customer's control but customers are nearly being blamed for causing a lot of this issue. The difference as I see it now, which nobody knows accurately, but I can guess, is that all of these funds bought the loans at a discount. I have evidence that some performing loans were included in the sale of the book of business to vulture funds and Deputy Pearse Doherty has raised this a number of times. If I have a performing loan from PTSB for €500,000 and it is sold, let us assume the purchase price is €250,000 and that the rate of interest is currently at 7%, that is 14% interest rate the vulture is getting on the €250,000 it paid for the loan. There is no way that anybody can reasonably convince me that the fairness of application to both are the same. That is despite the fact that we are assured it would be. The phrase I used that will probably become commonplace is "bank-locked". These people are bank-locked. They cannot put an extension on their house. They cannot get a top-up loan to carry out a retrofit because the vulture fund will not lend any further money. Because their asset is tied, they cannot use the asset for any purpose going forward.

Deputy O'Callaghan asked what the similarities are. It is one mortgage loan contract, and the bank is within its right to sell it, but I do not believe the implied conditions of the contract are being applied in not offering a fixed rate.