Professor Patrick Honohan:

We actually intervene a lot. We require them to hold more capital, we have the macro-prudential loan-to-value ratios, and all sorts of restrictions on the way they behave to consumers, which they regard as very burdensome. I want to get away from the idea that the Central Bank is trying to protect the banks rather than the consumer. It is the other way around. We want to protect consumers in the long run against a mistaken attempt to help them by damaging a mechanism which is not working well but could work better.