Professor Patrick Honohan:

Many say the ECB's mandate is solely price stability and, of course, that has been emphasised to the extreme, but it is not its sole mandate. Subject to achieving that mandate, the ECB - I will not get the wording right - is mandated to support the economic policies of the European Union. This can cover a great deal of the ground mentioned by the Deputy. Of course, the Americans have an explicit dual mandate on unemployment and price stability. However, it is not price stability and access to cheap housing; it is unemployment and inflation, whereas price stability has priority in Europe in supporting the economic policies of the Union. As such, supporting its economic policies is part of the ECB's mandate.

One must think carefully about the issue. These days central banks are extremely powerful because of the crisis. They needed to move away from normal operations and have taken control of additional matters. We at the Central Bank of Ireland already had banking supervision to some extent, but now it is at European level. One needs to be careful about giving too much power to an entity that must balance issues which should be balanced politically, not by appointed persons. I often laugh to myself when I hear people say the Central Bank is not doing this or that. I am thinking, "We are already really doing a lot of things". While these things are very much supported by the political system, for example, trying to have the issue of mortgage arrears fixed, whatever one says about how we have done it, we are doing a number of things that would be considered to be very much on the outskirts and the extreme edge of our mandate.