Mr. John A. Moran:

First, to make things very clear, I said to the banks at the time of that conference that at present there are loans that borrowers clearly do not have the ability to repay and continuing with that debt is neither good for the borrower nor for the broader economy and, therefore, the banks because their return to viability is dependent on an economy that grows. What has been disappointing in terms of the banks' reaction to the mortgage arrears crisis is that in terms of their ability to cope, from an operational perspective, with the challenge of dealing with borrowers one on one and understand the borrower's financial situation and what is appropriate, the banks seem to have been slow about gearing up to be able to deal with that. It is not a case, unfortunately, of them being in a position now where they can roll out broadly based solutions to everybody, because they have been taking some time to build the operational capacity to do that. Significant progress has been made on that front in recent months, and the pilot projects undertaken by the Central Bank and others in terms of the MARS project has helped to get a better appreciation of what needs to be done in the process. That said, it would have been preferable for everybody concerned to have seen action on that part more quickly and to have the banks in a position today, which I do not believe they are in, to be able to move more quickly on the recommendations that have come through mortgage steering group.