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

One thing I have found frustrating in the individual cases I have dealt with is that, having done everything possible to reach an accommodation, usually based on a fair assessment of the circumstances and involving some pain for the borrower, he or she will then read somewhere, or get some information to the effect, that somebody else has received a total write-down. Such a borrower will automatically ask me why he or she did not also get a total write-down, given he or she is the same as anybody else, having paid the penalties arising from the financial crash. How does the bank manage that? For instance, if there are no assets on a loan and there are no ways or means of a collection being made, that is considered an uncollectable debt, but why is it portrayed as being a write-down when the debt is uncollectable in any event? It makes life very difficult for those of us who try to make a case on behalf of small operators who feel they have a right to what they see as the same treatment as some of the bigger borrowers.