Mr. John Trethowan:

The Credit Review Office was set up under section 210 of the National Asset Management Agency Act 2009. That gives us powers to review bank decisions and intervene in pillar bank matters. It covers the NAMA banks, but, in effect, only two of them are active and lending to SMEs. We are restricted to these two banks. Ours powers are to make an adjudication on the lending process and a recommendation to the bank. In effect, the banks are not obliged to follow my recommendation, but in practice they have. There have been a couple of cases in which there have been technical difficulties with security which have emerged after the opinion has been issued. We have sought to use the guarantee scheme to try to overcome these also. The only people who can really put assets on their bank balance sheet are the executives and directors of a bank. We can make recommendations and that is what we do.