Mr. Bernard Byrne:

Yes, and we have done since it was established.

On the issue of personal guarantees, personal guarantees are still in existence in the Irish market. It is a feature of the current position of the Irish market. The logic is that many small and medium enterprises, SMEs, operate either in an incorporated structure or personally. Those who operate personally is a separate issue because they have taken on the borrowing personally. When they are operating with an incorporated structure, which may be for tax purposes or some other reasons, we have a choice, which is to try to get to the point where the person can put sufficient capital into the entity to support their commitment or, in many instances where they are unwilling to do that because it might cause a liquidation of assets to be necessary to put in the capital, a personal guarantee will be sought and put in place. People seek it in many instances. I am talking about the world now as opposed to the world pre-2008. It just happened pre-2008; personal guarantees existed for almost everything. The world we are in now is slightly different but personal guarantees are still a feature, and they allow people do things which they may not be able to do because they do not have access to equity or do not seek or wish to put in equity directly. We do not seek the family home in respect of those issues. That is an important distinction in respect to that. Currently, it is a feature. If we look at the general survey information available, the level of finance for SMEs in the Irish market that comes from banks is about 93% or 94%; it is significantly higher than the European norms. One of the reasons that is the case is because there is less equity being put in outside of banking. That is another feature that exists.

On our marketplace, we cannot take just one statistic for the market. In overall terms we must examine how SME lending works in the marketplace with other marketplaces. I do not believe a like-for-like comparison can be done. In overall terms we agree with the principle that there should not be blind personal guarantees in place. It should be focused on supporting the underlying banking transaction and banking proposition.