Ms Josephine Feehily:

It would probably be better if the Chairman provided details of the case in question. I am thinking of one or two circumstances where such a practice might arise. It is not that we would necessarily do so willingly, but I am already thinking of one or two cases such as debt discounters and such like which can happen where businesses enter into arrangements with discounters and then allocate part of that debt to us. All options arise in the context of entering into arrangements with businesses.

By way of providing information for the committee, last year we had 16,000 businesses and €124 million of debt under various "time-to-pay" arrangements. This is working fairly successfully. We test the viability of businesses before entering into such arrangements and our experience is that it works in a high proportion of them and that they come out the other end.