Professor Patrick Honohan:

-----but there are a lot of letters heading towards repossessions. That is not nice, particularly if it was not necessary and if there was a restructure available. One matter I have been pushing on is to find out, from our audit and from the information we have more generally, whether there is any danger these letters have been going out willy-nilly, regardless of insufficient contact with the borrower, and whether the bank did not try or did not try hard enough. This is where the code of conduct on mortgage arrears is underpinning. I am assured that, with only a few exceptions which I mentioned in the speech, in the vast majority of cases we are satisfied the bank has made the required efforts to engage. If the letters came out, it means either that engagement was not forthcoming from the borrower - he or she did not fill in the form or did not really respond - or the bank's initial assessment was that there was no viable solution.

As to the ratios in that case, I do not have a firm figure. However, by far the largest number are insufficient engagement. That gives hope in the form of a wake-up call to the borrower who is distressed and maybe reluctant to open letters from banks. Such borrowers need to engage because there could be a better restructuring solution available to them and a lot of these cases that are going down the so-called loss of ownership route can turn around and come back and have a more satisfactory restructure.