Mr. Liam O'Reilly:

Well, I would divide the issues into two. There were some micro issues and I think I've talked about them. But I think that the major issue was that before EMU, if credit started rising, the Central Bank would've increased interest rates. It wasn't there anymore. And there was this whole quandary as to what can you do if you don't have the major instrument to quell credit. And I think it took a while to actually realise that what was needed was what's called macro-prudential supervision, which was what instruments do you use now to quell credit and credit growth. And we've talked about these capital ratios, sectoral limits, etc., and I think that the whole process of developing that and making sure you had the quantitative work done behind it, so that when you had an instrument, in certain ... for instance, in terms of interest rates, there would've been models that said if you increase interest rates by X, that's the effect on credit; if you increase capital ratios by Y, what is going to be the effect on credit? And there was a need for that sort of work to be done.