Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael)
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From the point of view of the ordinary person looking at these proceedings and the small and medium enterprise, SME, Ulster Bank has a very strong presence in Limerick, where I am from, and it would be fair to say that Ulster Bank would have been pushing SME lending, particularly among the farming community and among SMEs. It would have had a reasonably good track record and brought some competition to the market for the other large mainstream banks. This was a situation where it is clear there was a bonus scheme in place in terms of these loans being advanced, many of them property-related loans. The bank suddenly came along and sold €14 billion of gross loans, which was approximately 90% of the number of customers, clearly at a significant discount rate. Many of those people have been in contact with us. Many of them advised us that they were performing loans. They are now being pursued vigorously by the vulture funds that took them over. Does Mr. Blair believe Ulster Bank had a fiduciary responsibility as the bank that would have advanced these loans for which staff would have got bonuses? First, does Mr. Blair believe Ulster Bank should have worked out those loans? Second, what measures would Ulster Bank have sought to be put in place by the vulture funds that purchased the loans to ensure that the customers were treated in the same terms under which the original loan agreements were signed? The problem here is that in the real world, these people are family businesses. They employ many people. Many of them cannot sleep at night. Mr. Blair speaks about what is best for the bank, but what is best for the bank is best for the customers. Will Mr. Blair outline the thinking around selling these loans, how the bank justified selling them on with discounts and the type of due diligence it would have done in respect of responsibilities to customers in that when they were being sold on, the vulture funds that purchased them would have treated them in the same fashion Ulster Bank was treating them?