Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

We cannot answer that. That is a question, ultimately, for either the Department of Finance or the National Treasury Management Agency because it depends hugely on the funding strategy and so on. It is therefore not really a question we can answer beyond what Mr. Madouros has just said, which is that interest rates are going up for everybody.

I want to underline something Mr. Madouros said about the crypto stuff, which the Senator may not have heard me talk about earlier. To be very clear, this area is new. The risks, especially with unbacked crypto right now, arise primarily with retail customers. We are not ignoring the fact that financial stability risks could arise in the future. The point I made, and which Mr. Madouros has just repeated, is that, right now, those interconnections that created different problems in the past are pretty small. However, we are not allowing that to lead us into a sense of complacency. We want to get on the front foot to make sure the problem does not grow and then become a headache we cannot manage. That is a view shared by the global regulatory community.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has proposed new rules for banks aimed at this precise area. The global community is also looking to be on the front foot of this issue. On the individual accountability framework, as soon as the legislation gets through the Oireachtas and is signed into law, we are ready to publish our draft guidance and start a consultation process. We hope it will be fairly quick in order that we can put everything into law but we need to allow time for people to digest what are doing. The institutions that will be impacted have known for a while that they are going to be impacted. Some have learned from similar regulations in the United Kingdom. This is not going to be a surprise to them. The guidance we are putting together amounts to over 100 pages, as I understand it. We are ready to proceed as soon as the Oireachtas and, ultimately, the President, sign this into law.