Professor Patrick Honohan:

My impression is that we have the powers we need to get this done. It is different when we talk about criminal matters, but on the mortgage issue it is not a question of saying that if only we had the powers, we could force them to do this or that. It is a question of what we can force them to do that will induce them to act on a case by case basis that will deliver the results we want. I would be fearful that if we lock them into a situation where they must do one thing and not another, in a specific directive that would straitjacket them, the banks will say they no longer care what they do and will just follow mechanically the instructions provided by the Central Bank. We are not equipped to go through 120,000 cases of arrears and adjudicate on the rightness or wrongness of them. We only see a sample of these.