Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, I would mention the bankruptcy ... or, insolvency legislation. This is a big part of dealing with the mortgage arrears, and I'll play the role that we had there. We had a number of powers in the Central Bank and used them. Firstly with the code of conduct on mortgage arrears, that's under consumer protection power. And then we used the ... our powers under prudential supervision which, in ways, are more ... they're ... we've greater powers in that case and we use them. They might have had the side-effect of accelerating the resolution and easing the situation of borrowers, but they had ... the principle effect was to make sure that the banks would sort their problems promptly, because we felt that they were placing ... they were ... they were prolonging the risk situation by not dealing with the mortgage arrears promptly. So, we used our prudential powers to oblige the banks to meet certain targets. We had already used, not formal powers, but we had already used informal powers to get them to ramp up, dramatically, their capacity to deal with the mortgage arrears situation. So we felt we were taking the lead to that extent, in using existing legislation.