Mr. Edmund Honohan:

We should have a system which we might call "Abhaile". I am joking again. A sum of €250 is not going to get legal advice on the sort of topics being discussed here. Legal aid is the only way for the issues which are required to be litigated by the EU to be brought forward. We should be trying to avoid the courts altogether. That is why I hope that in the transposition of that portion of the directive, Professor Kenna's suggestion, that this was an opportunity to create a new architecture for processing and completing the resolution of credit default situations, would be taken up.

We already have this in the case of insolvency. There is creep there. I think the credit purchasers are aware of the fact that they are losing houses. People are going bankrupt and they are holding onto their houses. It could be argued that there is a safe harbour being created for family homes in the insolvency end of the litigation but not in the non-insolvent cases - people who actually do have money. They are not actually bust yet, or over the top. Those are the cases which should be accommodated with equal sympathy.