Professor Patrick Honohan:

I used it and then the Deputy picked up on it. Let me explain why I used it. We are negotiating and asking for something which is not usual for people to agree to. If we want to get them to agree to it, we want to design it in such a way that it is not so far away from their comfort zone that they will just say "No". That is the point. We have to get an agreement and if we ask for this, which is designed in such a way that it absolutely looks completely unacceptable, they will say "No" but maybe we can get the same by designing it in a little bit different way. That is where the comfort zone comes in; it does not come in for the banks. The Central Bank has no interest in leaving banks in any comfort zone. We want results from the banks. We cannot say, "Just do it", because they have not shown the capacity to just do it. That is why we have to try to get them to have systems that will deliver and that is why it becomes apparently banal and mundane but if they do not have the systems, they will not be able to deliver on any numerical targets that we set in any realistic way. We are not in the space of keeping the banks-----