Professor Philip Lane:

This new phase of macroprudential policy is an ongoing thing. It is fair to say that it remains for the full universe of the policy to be explored. There may be existing instruments which have not yet been put into Irish legislation. I will mention one such instrument, which is called a systemic risk buffer. A systemic risk buffer is where we think that there is some particular type of risk facing the economy, which is not cyclical, so we tell banks that they need to hold extra capital if they are lending to a particular sector because we think that sector is especially risky. That is something which is allowed for in European legislation but which has not been put through the Irish system.