The meeting has been provisionally scheduled for 4pm in the Department of Finance, with participants, also including Banking & Payments Federation Ireland CEO Brian Hayes, practicing social distancing guidelines. “We saw a number of exploratory calls last week from people looking at what options they might have. There’s been a significant increase in borrowers looking for forbearance,” said a source at one of the State’s five mainstream banks. Irish banking stocks were down sharply again on Tuesday as investors continued to fret about the economic impact of Covid-19 and an expected surge in bad debt. AIB was down 6.5 per cent at 1.30pm, while Bank of Ireland lost 10.3 per cent.

Source: The Irish Times March 17, 2020 14:26 UTC