Mr. Jim O'Keeffe:

Deputy Tóibín spoke about the stress and anguish borrowers can experience. From our long years of dealing with this matter, we know that it is dreadfully tough on customers. The Senator categorised these advisers as non-regulated. Anybody listening will probably say that sounds as if there is something wrong with these third parties. However, very often borrowers may nominate somebody they trust to engage on their behalf with the bank. We talk all the time about engagement. If a borrower decides that they are going to trust somebody else to engage with us, it is important that we at least engage with them at that level. We have seen good outcomes from that because we can engage with the borrower on that basis.