Mr. Christopher Lehane:

There are two points to be made. The first is that when a person becomes bankrupt all of their other unsecured liabilities are written off. The pressure to pay off their credit card bill or their credit union loan is gone. Their capacity to pay their mortgage, ironically, improves. They may have been making interest-only payments, trying to satisfy three or four buy-to-let mortgages. That madness of the tiger economy we have gone through and the collapse is that many people across every profession bought a second or a third home. When a person becomes bankrupt, in terms of buy-to-let properties, if they are all in negative equity, I would surrender them to the financial institution. If there is equity in them, I would recover that amount and pay in that respect. The truth is that those commitments that have been causing huge distress for people in terms of sleepless nights improves in bankruptcy because they no longer have all those commitments. They do not pay off their credit cards. Whatever funds I get, they get a dividend. The capacity of an individual to pay the mortgage, therefore, improves. The answer to the Chairman's question is that on the basis that the interest continues to vest in me, if the property is in negative equity as soon as the person comes up with €5,000, he or she will get-----