Mr. Michael Torpey:

I think, Deputy, the ... you know, the ... house prices did increase dramatically through the period, as you rightly say, from 1996 through to the peak of house prices. That happened in the context of a dramatically changing environment in the Irish marketplace. It happened in an environment where the cost of debt service, for example, was falling very substantially. Interest rates fell from the very, very high levels we experienced in previous decades-----