Mr. Rob Wright:

I thank Senator Barrett for that clarification. I think the move to 100% mortgages was about helping first home buyers in Ireland. In Canada, we had limited mortgage insurance, up to 85% of the value of a home. There were private sector insurance providers which helped move that up to 90% or 95% and in Canada there was a concern that this might overheat the economy. We approached the Minister with advice on restraining that limit and some of his political advisers had real concerns about the impact on the housing market, but the Minister did not. It was not even in Minister Flaherty's Department but he took action to restrain it because he did not want a bubble. In that particular circumstance there was strong evidence of an overheated construction sector, so to do something expansionary at that point was a real concern. The Department questioned it somewhat. I think a Minister in Government had raised some questions about it but in the end, particularly once the regulator said it could support 100%, it was very hard to resist. It should have been. At that point in time, what the country needed was a strategy for how to manage a soft landing in the construction sector.