Mr. Edmund Honohan:

I should give credit where credit is due. The reason we are here today, funnily enough, is because the banks have been quite protective of their ordinary domestic mortgagors. They have gone instead for the low fruit, the tenants. They now find that they are up against the ECB which says that this is not enough, that they are not going to clear their balance sheet that way and that they are now going to have to start digging into the ordinary householders. The banks are saying that they are not going to do that and that they are going to sell to the vulture funds instead.

That is the crisis. From the point of view of our own banks, who in my experience in court have behaved quite responsibly towards homeowners, we have now reached a cliff. In situations like this banks seem to be saying that they have to either sell to a vulture fund or sell to a co-op. If the co-op agrees to give the bank what is on the balance sheet then my impression is that the banks are not inclined to go out with a begging bowl looking for extra money. Dealing with a court supervised sale certainly takes time. The committee knows how the courts are.