Mr. Angel Mas:

A small technical point on Deputy Doherty's assessment that this is a problem of funding. Fundamentally the banks see it as a problem of risk and risk is associated with reserves and capital. Banks perceive that high LTV loans have specific risk characteristics. This is not due to the low quality of the loan, which must be of high quality, as we cannot do sub-prime high loan-to-value, no question about it. Even when a good quality loan originates from the high loan-to-value segment, if it goes on default the loss for the bank will be much bigger. In view of that, the banks must have bigger reserves and much more capital - sometimes six times as much capital. That is why the cost of high LTV loans is much greater. Such loans are directly associated with first-time buyers, which is why first-time buyers are the first to suffer when there is a solvency or capital problem in the bank. There is no credit access to them, so we are trying to propose a way of reconciling those two elements: prudent access to credit for first-time buyers and macro prudence and financial stability.