Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

My colleagues may take the Governor up on the detail of my final question. He has been asked many questions on the mortgage crisis. In view of the fact that this has taken so many resources from the Irish economy and people are in extreme difficulty trying to meet mortgage repayments on their homes, would he not take the bold step, which the committee put to him previously, of a general write-down of debt on home mortgages and a downward calibration of the monthly payments and, in that way, free up massive resources that could go into the real economy rather than into the black hole of the banks? Is the obvious solution not to have a significant write-down of debt in general?