Mr. Vasileios Madouros:

We always consider the balance between the benefits any measures we introduce bring for the economy as a whole and the cost of those measures. No policy intervention is cost free; there are always benefits and costs that we try to balance.

We consider that very carefully and continually across all our various interventions. One specific example of where we looked at this closely and made targeted adjustments was in the mortgage measures, which have been in place since 2015. They have been an absolutely critical underpinning of more sustainable lending standards and have been very beneficial for the economy as a whole. Aggregated levels of indebtedness have fallen significantly and the quality of new lending is much better. In 2021 and 2022 we looked at them, as we always do with our measures. We looked at the balance of benefits and costs and our judgment at the time was that the benefits are substantial, but over time some of the costs had gradually increased.