Mr. Edmund Honohan:

The key thing is about the interest rate but more generally if I go to the bank and get a mortgage with the bank, I am signing on the dotted line to an Irish institution - my father had an account there, money has changed hands, I might get a car loan from them next year – and I have a relationship with them. Then under the assignment laws, I find that the mortgage has been transferred out and I am dealing with some stranger. On that very superficial level, it is not the same. That is why they had to come out and say “It’s the same. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a name change basically.” But now we have a situation where the same transferee, the assignee, is asserting that he is entitled to change the rate of interest. You might panic and ask how did that happen? The bank is only charging 4.2% and these people are charging 9%. You go back to the small print and it says that it can vary the rate of interest but it has to be “for a valid reason”. That is what has not been litigated by the Central Bank. Can you expect a lay litigant to go into court and say “Judge, I want to rely on the section in the unfair terms contracts", which I set out in my opening statement. It is just impossible to conceive of a case in which a judge will actually entertain a clumsy and poorly framed submission in that regard. There you have a piece of European law and it lies on the table somewhere, below the judge; he has not looked at it and he says, “let’s move onto the next case.”