Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for the confusion. I was trying to attend four meetings at the same time, which is difficult. I am back. I have just heard something that we have sadly all dealt with over the last years. Differentiating between people as being customers and non-customers is nonsense. I would have presumed that everybody is a customer if they have a deal to borrow money and repay it over a certain period.

When we go back to the banks to try to negotiate on behalf of customers, every proposal we put before them is met with a reply that it is not sustainable. If we look at the day on which the loans were granted by the same institutions, they were not sustainable from the beginning if we take into account the necessity to protect the customer. I have said many times that I believe the Central Bank has a role that it needs to exercise in such circumstances because the public needs to be protected, especially in an inflationary market. People were told that they were sitting on assets, that they should borrow money to ensure they put the asset to work and they would become wealthy, and all kinds of nonsense.

Sustainability is an issue. I dealt with many cases where the loan was not sustainable from the first day, given the circumstances of the applicant, but they were encouraged to incur the debt in order to allegedly improve themselves.

Another issue is settlements versus repossession. We have all tried to arrange settlements. It is not unreasonable that in the event of a crash or such, the customer can come to the lending institution and attempt to negotiate. I had a discussion with a lending institution last week. Whenever I turned the conversation around and said that the lender really wanted to repossess people's homes, put them out on the road and make them homeless, they said that I was putting words in the lender's mouth.

That is, in effect, what the proposer wants and we need protection against that. I note the number of evictions that are currently proposed is still very alarming.

The point at issue is this. I cannot see why, when the crash came, it was not possible for the lending institutions, even at that stage, to negotiate with their borrowers some kind of long-term or medium-term proposal whereby they could ease the person back into a business or allow the person who borrowed the money to pay over a period and in stages in order to safeguard their home and property.

My next point is in regard to the courts. Sadly, we have all been in the courts on various occasions with customers over the past ten years or so. Generally speaking, the courts have been very sympathetic but it is true, as was said, that some of the institutions think badly about adhering to what the court decides and will go a different route, if possible. Like the Chairman and other members, I have dealt with cases where, having negotiated what appears to be a reasonable settlement in the circumstances, the lending institution decides it does not want that and that it wants to take everything because the customer finds they cannot meet what was originally intended. The word of the court needs to be observed.

Incidentally, on that question about the courts having dealt with the issue before, I am conversant with this. We need to talk at our private meeting about the ways and means of ensuring that, even though the courts have dealt such issues before, there is a possibility and a structure whereby the courts can deal with them again in the light of emerging circumstances.

I am sorry for the rant but the Chairman and I know we have all been through this many times. Hopefully, we will not have to go through it again. However, anything we can do for people who found themselves in this situation, we must do it. At the same time, we must try to ensure that the Central Bank, which has a very important role in these matters, does its job to the extent that it should in order to protect the customer.