Mr. Fergus Murphy:

In EBS ... again, in fairness to them, before my time, EBS had mortgage indemnity insurance in place. That means that, with an international insurance company, EBS was insuring its book, so that the first loss on the book up to a particular attachment point, and I'll explain that in a moment, is taken by the insurance company. So, for example, if the attachment point is 85% LTV, loan-to-value, then the first 15% loss is for the account of the insurance company. In principle, that was the approach by the society. And that was an effort by the society to protect its capital and to protect its members. When EBS was talking about 100% mortgages, in the same way as other banks were, they, at least, were apportioning this insurance, or they had this insurance against those mortgages. But in terms of looking at 100% mortgages, No. 1, I wouldn't agree with them, and I did away with them, and in the second half of 2008 LTVs, loan-to-values, and debt service coverage ratios, called DSCRs, and NDIs, net disposable income ratios, were all commenced and started to be moved down. And during my tenure there were nine formal changes to the credit policy of the organisation, which reflects the credit appetite, and each of those nine formal changes brought the credit appetite more conservative, and tightened the appetite. Interestingly, Senator, if I might say, during the period before I joined, for the six years before I joined, there were 13 changes to the credit appetite, or to the credit policy, and they were all increasing the credit appetite and loosening standards. In terms of 100% LTV mortgages, given that I don't agree with them, but given that they were in place, the most important point in evaluating them is the affordability of the customer in relation to the loan they're drawing down.