In a statement to the Sunday Tribune, the Irish Banking Federation (IBF) said its member institutions "will continue to work with the system of solicitors' undertakings, and IBF is consulting with its members to determine how this system can be further strengthened. To this end, and as further clarity emerges around all of the relevant aspects, IBF will also continue to engage constructively with all the relevant stakeholders in this process, including the Property Registration Authority, the Law Society and the Financial Regulator."

A spokeswoman for the IBF said it was up to individual banks, however, to decide whether they would allow solicitors to give undertakings on their own behalf.

So far two lenders, Bank of Scotland Ireland and Irish Life & Permanent, have stopped allowing solicitors to certify titles on properties in which they had an interest.

Bank of Scotland went even further this week when it sent a memo to mortgage brokers advising them that the bank would no longer allow solicitors' undertakings on behalf of their colleagues either.

But several other banks, including AIB and National Irish Bank . . . both of which are owed millions by Lynn and Byrne . . . have not yet changed their lending policies with respect to undertakings and have only said the practices are under review.

Ulster Bank, First Active and Bank of Ireland were unwilling to offer comments, although it is understood that BoI stopped accepting undertakings from solicitors acting on their own behalf sometime this year.

The director general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, was critical of the banks' willingness to rely on solicitors to represent themselves in property transactions.

"The certification of title system was designed to facilitate clients in the purchasing, under mortgage, of their homes. It was never intended to be used by individual solicitors undertaking loans on their own behalf, " he sai. "It is surprising, to say the least, that financial institutions were prepared to accept selfcertification of title by borrowers in such circumstances and not to retain their own solicitor to investigate title and protect the security, as happens in normal lending situations."

Senior sources in the banking industry have said lenders are combing through their accounts to see if other Lynns or Byrnes are out there, but that banks may prefer to settle affairs out of court. AIB could not confirm Friday whether it had uncovered three more solicitors with multiple mortgages on the same properties, as had been reported last week.