Ms Noeline Blackwell:

Everything that Mr. Hall and Ms Walsh have said is correct. We must remember who the banks are sending out to deal with borrowers. They are sending out unqualified, inexperienced people who really only have the job of getting through a number of files in a particular time and reporting back to somebody who is only interested in the figures at the end of it. There is no capacity to have a proper conversation with the client. It depends on how terrified the person at the other end is as well. The borrower is terrified but sometimes it seems to us that the person who is trying to manage it for the creditor is terrified as well. They are not trained. They are not doing business in a professional way. They do not know the law around it.

On the issue of inconsistency, last week we had a case in which we established that the bank was using guidelines that were kind of consistent with the insolvency service arrangement, but then it started to ask about the €20 a week that was being spent on something or other. We have to say, we have been there and done that, so one recommendation would be that the banks accept at least the Insolvency Service of Ireland minimum guidelines. As Ms Dunne from MABS said, people are people. Could we at least start with not having to go through every tuppence on a standard financial statement? That is something that could be done immediately.