Professor Patrick Honohan:

Let me say, what we tried, what we had the ambition earlier on was to say "Look, let's have a mechanical rule, let's see if there is a mechanical rule which could allow the banks to sort the people who can pay from the people who can't pay and give it a standard haircut." We couldn't find a mechanism. All mechanisms which we designed were going to involve too many additional losses and therefore additional burdens on the taxpayer going to people who didn't need the help. So it has to be judgment case by case. So how do you underwrite it? Underwriting a loan is an art rather than a science.