Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, I'm not arguing. I'm just saying it is not... I take your point but it is not just residential mortgage debt; it's also personal debt, credit card debt. I think that basically what you see in the experience of moving from a low wage to a high wage economy that Ireland did from the 90s up to the mid-noughties, I suppose, you have the question then, because of higher disposable income, you have also better prospects, people feeling better about it and being prepared to invest whether it is in property or whether through personal ... use credit cards, etc. ... people felt obviously that they were in a position to do this because they saw their prospects as quite positive and the horizon out over the future quite steady and quite predictable. So that's the first point.

Secondly, the economic growth was driving the credit growth. There's no doubt about that. When economic performance went into reverse, credit growth stopped. So the issue is affordability, at the end of the day, and there were warnings I take it, and there were statements made by regulators and others about the need for people to be prudent, about the question of the interest rate cycle, and all this stuff. But, at the end of the day, moral suasion doesn't necessarily change behaviour; that's why you needed, perhaps, a more interventionist model. And it is true that the principles-based model that we had allowed this to continue. Before an intervention was made it was probably too late in terms of the size of the debt. So that's very much to be regretted. But I do make the point that, because of the formation of capital in the country, the ability ... where you get access to capital if you haven't indigenous wealth in your community, if people don't have the earnings for a long enough period of time to build their own wealth, then the question of low interest rate loans becomes a very attractive option for people if they're looking for housing.