Professor Patrick Honohan:

An advantage of targets is that one can tell a bank that it has or has not done what it said it would by a certain date. The troika has been using this technique across policy areas. When it heard what we were doing and that the Oireachtas was enthusiastic, it latched onto this as another target to be included. As has been evident in recent years, when people set concrete policy targets that must be delivered by the end of June or September, it focuses the mind and stuff gets done. Sometimes, it gets done in an unsatisfactory way, but progress is made.