Professor John McHale:

The tracker mortgages on the books of the banks are reducing their profitability and worsening the position with regard to their balance sheets. Anything that can be done in the context of providing low-cost funding for tracker mortgages would be a positive development. Is it a likely development? Essentially, that would involve a transfer from other European countries to Ireland in the form of subsidised funding. Such funding would come at a lower cost than that which we could raise ourselves. It would certainly be welcome but, I think, unlikely.