John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I reassure Deputy Troy if the bank has to be invited in again then, as Mr. O'Keeffe knows, we will issue the invitation. There have been extensive questions asked and information requested during the course of this meeting and I am sure AIB will provide us with what we need as soon as possible.

Deputy Mairéad Farrell is waiting to come in, but I want to go back to something Mr. O'Keeffe said. He mentioned the bail-out money to support the customers of the banks. I cannot let him away with that, because the bail-out was caused by lots of things and the banks were central to it. Had the banks and their audit teams presented the figures in such a way as to indicate what was going on in the banks clearly and in a more upfront way, we might have been able to manage the crash better. It was funny, or maybe just a coincidence, that before the crash everything was perfect, the banks were solvent and so on, and then suddenly there were not. I find that very difficult to understand, but that is going back in history. The banking investigation was set up to deal with that but it was a whitewash and did not serve much purpose and we have been learning, or we should be, ever since.

Having said that, I advise customers who may still be in trouble and dealing with the bank that the correct thing to do is to come forward and discuss their case with the bank, put their cards on the table and give the truth of their circumstances. Such customers, of any bank, could perhaps use the organisations Mr. O'Keeffe mentioned in his opening statement, namely, the Irish Mortgages Holders Organisation, iCare, MABS and the Housing Agency to seek information and come to the bank to engage with it. Various members have said they have engaged with AIB and found it to be, as I think one member said, reasonable to deal with. I wanted to clear this up in case we get a rush of people coming to us saying they are reasonable and we should tell them what they can do. I have found every engagement with Mr. O'Keeffe's bank and every other to be robust, very challenging and without certainty of any outcome. That is the way it should be, because it challenges the bank's systems. It also challenges the customer who is in difficulty. If it was easier than we would really be asking questions. The real question therefore is whether the system is fair to everyone and whether the playing field is level for everyone. That is the reassurance we were seeking from Mr. O'Keeffe's bank today. While we can say the bank officials have given evidence to that effect, I would not like customers of any bank to think it is an easy process, because it is not. It can be quite harrowing for some people.

Mr. O'Keeffe mentioned the commentary in the media and said aspects of it "have been incomplete and have not presented the full picture". I can understand that and these committee meetings can be a two-way street, that is, witnesses may get their opportunity to clarify matters and be specific where they can be, and so on. Many questions have been asked about the breakdown of these figures. I am going to ask the bank officials present to reflect on the questions that have been asked and give as much of a breakdown as they can to the committee I do not want details on any individual case, but on the different groupings within the write-off figures they have given. This is so the public can get to understand what is happening in the banks in a much clearer fashion. In this way people will not be dealing with the broad technical terms and figures, but with easily understood descriptions of borrowers and the moneys that were written. A general commentary would allay the fears people have, and have expressed since reading what was in the media in the last number of months. That would be hugely important not just for AIB and the other banks, but for soothing the public disquiet out there. There is disquiet among people who have perhaps settled with the banks or gone through processes. They are reflecting and saying if they had known a particular thing, they would have approached matters differently. The bank owes it to the customers it has settled with, as much as to those who are looking for debt resolution, to explain to them that these are the real figures. Paper never refuses ink and there are two sides to every story, but we cannot see the other side. Accordingly, we rely on the banks to give us as much of a picture of that other side as they can.

Maybe after the closed period, which is how the bank described it, it might give the information from the bank to flesh out those questions. We did send a questionnaire to the other banks to help members understand how they approached it. I think we would refresh that questionnaire bearing in mind the questions asked today and put those questions to the bank so that we can say we treated all banks the same and we are getting the same information from them.

I have a couple of general questions. When AIB is dealing with debt resolution, who decides the route to take? Whether it is bankruptcy or a write-off, who decides that? Is it a decision taken between the bank and the customer or is it a case that the bank decides the route?