Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

When Mr. Masding mentioned earlier - it is on the first page of the document he furnished to the joint committee - that we are "ten years on from the start of the financial crisis", it was interesting to hear him joining many commentators in saying "we are closer to the start of the next one [the next crisis] than to the end of the last one". In other words, the bank is already envisaging the next crisis. At the moment, some of the pressure of the last crisis is being released by the capital values of the overpriced properties in respect of which Permanent TSB offered mortgages some years ago.

With hindsight I suspect Mr. Masding would agree that many of the properties were heavily overpriced. The individual customer is not a market maker. The customer does not have that power in the market. If we are now closer to the next crisis, and if moral hazard is Mr. Masding's ethical framework, it is reasonable for people in the housing market - Mr. Masding has impressive statistics there about new lending of €0.5 billion plus - where interest rates are slowly but surely rising to ask what if anything he is doing to protect those people in the statistics on the total new lending? Does the bank expect interest rates to rise?

Mr. Masding said there is a next crisis. Can he fill us in on his view on that and , in particular, on people taking out loans? Does he expect interest rates to rise? That could make them just as affordable.