Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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They cannot, because they are on a fixed income. We need to deal with that somehow.

I will finish off on the question of moral hazard or whatever they call it nowadays whereby an individual write-down was not available. I and members here have dealt with cases where payments have been made every month for the past 15 or 20 years but, because of the banking crash, they were not able to meet the payments as they were at the beginning. As a result, we are now in a situation where the investment houses concerned made no attempt and refused point blank. Countless propositions were made and they ignored them. They said it was not their policy and it is not sustainable. Of course, they were protecting themselves. They sold them on in some cases. They sold them on at a write-down to another group of companies, which now are rounding on the customer and intimidating the customer on the basis that they have waited long enough. It was created by themselves in the first place. They are now rounding on the customer and putting severe pressure on many of those people. The simple reason for that is that different circumstances have affected different people. Some households have been affected by family illness, some by death, etc. These things all have an effect. It is no good the lending agencies or the investment houses saying they are not concerned about that kind of thing and they want their money. They bought an impaired debt from somebody. All the constituent factors were not included in the purchase either but they want the best factors to apply insofar as they are concerned now at the collection at this stage.