Mr. Edmund Honohan:

The fact that we have a peculiar way of dealing with it? It is impossible in most cases for a lay litigant or for any litigant to get behind the title and to find out who the true owner is. You might say, “Ah well, the money is owed anyway,” but, for example, there may be claims against the loan originator which they would like to pursue. That is another part of the directive we are considering today. I do not know if the Deputy has cottoned onto that but it says they actually introduced a new section into the 2014 directive. It is Article 28a, which says, “In the event of an assignment to a third party of the creditor’s rights under a credit agreement, or of the credit agreement itself, the consumer shall be entitled to plead against the assignee [that is the credit purchaser] any defence which was available to the consumer as against the original creditor, including set-off where the latter is permitted in the Member State concerned.” This is new law in Ireland. If you raise your hand in court in Ireland to tell the judge you are not happy with how Ulster Bank dealt with your loan, the other side will say that it is all water under the bridge and you are now dealing with some other entity. If you have a claim with Ulster Bank, good luck to you.

There is new law which should be introduced by means of primary legislation. I will offer a fair bet that nobody will have read that. It will take another ten years before somebody actually manages to get a judge to sit up and take notice that it is possible to bring a claim for an offset against the original lender because of how it messed me around, let me down and so on. That is now to be passed on and to be burdened onto the credit purchasers, who will do due diligence at the time they buy. They will say, "Hang on a second, we are not tying that bundle of documents". This would include cases where there are no mortgage deeds or loan notes. This would look very iffy from the perspective of investors. They might or might not be able to get insurance, but, ultimately, the possibility is that if the Irish system is seen or perceived to be porous in terms of title, then investors will not take up the non-performing loans as a reasonable punt.