Professor Patrick Honohan:

This is the whole point. Our approach to sustainable solutions is not to tolerate an arrangement which is so onerous that people cannot have a proper life and cannot get out from under these debts. That is the whole concept of sustainability. The Deputy may say, and he will be right, that there are some cases which purport to be sustainable and are not. Some institutions may be worse than others at that. The Deputy would be right in saying so. However, the Central Bank is setting out intuitively to oblige the banks to act and call them out when they do not.