Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

We do not have any powers in terms of setting rates in practical terms. On the other hand, we do have powers, as I said in response to Deputy Doherty, at the ECB to set the deposit facility rate and to decide how that should apply to the deposits that the banks make and that could influence their decision making. However, these are commercial decisions. The banks, to be fair to them, have been slow in passing on the rate increases but it is not that they have done nothing. They have been slow but we have seen the banks making announcements recently.

From a monetary policy perspective, I would want to see much faster pass through of the decisions we make to the real economy on both sides of the ledger. As I said in my statement and as Mr. Madouras said, this is the first time in a long time that we have had an interest rate hiking cycle. How the monetary policy decisions are being transmitted through the economy is something we want to pay extremely close attention to, so this is not an issue that is going to disappear from our work programme.