Ms Niamh Murphy:

In terms of the first part of the Deputy's question on the CCMA, some of the firms we have mentioned are part of the oversight process the Central Bank is undertaking at present. Mr. Joyce mentioned that he was not aware of any inspections which were planned. They have actually commenced. Our members have received letters from the Central Bank. They have completed a type of factfinding process last month and on-site visits have taken place. Those visits take place in the large banks but also in the service providers who are acting, in some cases, on behalf of UK based companies that have exited this market, so they are certainly in scope.

As Mr. Crowley mentioned they are concerned about their reputation and making sure they comply with all aspects of the regulation and actively pursue that. It is in their interest to ensure that if this is a growing market in the Irish economy in terms of new contracts coming on stream that they are best placed to bid for those if they can show through their previous practices that they comply with the regulations in place. A new round of additional consumer protection regulations was put in place in the past couple of weeks by the Central Bank. It consulted twice on those. In recent months we certainly contributed to both consultations and other stakeholders and interest parties were eligible to do so also. On that basis the Central Bank has reinforced consumer protection in the debt management firms category. There has been much activity in that area and the firms we are talking about have been through the oversight process. In terms of individual contracts between the firms and the purchasers, we would not be privy to those. The documents are not publicly available so that would be something in terms of competition that we would-----