Mr. Colm Kincaid:

The best indicator we have is the mortgage arrears statistics we publish regularly. The most recent set, published last year as I mentioned, showed a significant continuing downward trend in arrears but as I said to Deputy Doherty, we are facing into a more difficult period ahead. One of the things we have been getting the lenders to do is go through the loan books they have to understand the characteristics of the borrowers. Some will be able to switch, some will be performing and paying and some will be facing difficulties in paying and will need the suite of options that are available to them. The suite is now quite broad and includes features such as interest rate discounts, split mortgages and discounted mortgage rates for a fixed- and long-term period. The important thing we have found through the work we have done over the past decade or so on mortgage arrears is that there really is no substitute for the institutions doing an analysis at a loan-by-loan level and being ready to engage with borrowers. As I said, we have seen a degree of responsiveness to date from some of the lenders, especially the ones that have been referred to, but it is going to remain an area of focus for us.

If I may stray a little into some of the earlier comments on this, to be very clear, when we engage on an issue like this, we engage on it until we believe our work is done. Therefore, we will engage on this issue to the full extent of our powers and our resources until we are satisfied the very clear expectations we set out in the letter we published in November of last year are being met, while recognising the scope of our mandate and that, as the Governor said, we do not have a mandate in specifically setting prices. I wanted to be clear about that.