Mr. Edmund Honohan:

I cannot really because it is a new phenomenon they introduced. As I said, it is like virtual fundraising without any paperwork changing hands. This whole area of the European capital market is a fast-moving development in Europe and it is going even further because it will have to deal with digital contracts, digital titles, the nature of control over the underlying asset and bitcoins and all that kind of stuff. In England, they have done an immense amount of work in parliament to try to prepare for the arrival of the digital market. We will probably pick up on this in about 20 years. We will still be relying on the Registration of Title Act 1964 and saying that is good enough for us.

I should perhaps also mention that there has been quite an interesting development of which the Cathaoirleach may not be aware. In 2015, the original Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) Act was passed, which set up the standard template for the Central Bank. Then, three years later, legislators came along and amended it. That is very strange. One would have thought they would have gotten it right the first time around. What happened in the amendment? The amendment involved a couple of very small things. However, it involved hanging the description of a credit servicing firm to include the holder of legal title to the credit. Now, it is a complete change. Credit servicing firms obviously had a problem because they were not owners or accepted as being servicers if they owned the loan. The loan originators could not be accepted as servicers if they owned the loan, which they maintained they did. Therefore, they came up with a new formula asking to let them call themselves holders of the legal title to the credit. Conveniently, however, they dropped the words "to the credit". They now come to court and say they are the holder of the legal title. This is another dodge that is utterly confusing to the Circuit Court judge, who will say this seems pretty good and that they have a registered title. They could go on the registered title or go on this other thing saying they have a contract that states they are the holder of the legal title. The judge will say that is grand and he or she will go with that, but it is the holder of the legal title to credit, which is an entirely different thing. There is no such thing in conveyancing as the holder of a legal title. A person is either the owner or he or she is not. A person cannot not be the owner if he or she is the holder of legal title. It is not a conveyancing concept. That we had to introduce this innovation in 2018 seems to suggest to me that there was clear difficulty about servicing firms continuing to act in the careless way they had been acting up until then.