Professor Eamonn Walsh:

Yes, absolutely. In 2006 the loan to value ratios for domestic mortgages were changed by the Financial Regulator, with an additional capital penalty for lenders if they issued a mortgage that had a loan to value ratio in excess of 80%. In the regulator's report on this, one of the reasons given for doing it was international financial reporting standards. In other words, because it knows that impairments were not being recorded in a timely way, it puts in an additional capital requirement for these particular riskier residential mortgages.