Mr. Colm Kincaid:

I very much share and agree with the Deputy's concerns in this regard. This is an area that is to the forefront of the work we are doing. There is a special onus on lenders which do not have a full suite of options to ensure they have arrangements in place to anticipate and deal with people who may not be able to pay their mortgage. As part of the work we have been doing on arrears, as we saw core inflation take hold coming into the second half of last year, we wrote to each of the CEOs of the firms, including the firms the Deputy is talking about, to set out some clear expectations for them as to how we expect them to act to meet their regulatory obligations at this time. Principal among that was for them to be proactive in analysing the characteristics of their borrowers and understanding the impact of any pricing decisions they make. As the Governor said, we do not have a role in setting or restricting prices for mortgages. As the Deputy said, we have seen interest rates raised by some of those lenders. We are engaged with them now on how they are analysing the impact of that, the suite of options they have available. We will be challenging them to understand how they are applying the characteristics-----