Professor Patrick Honohan:

In the context of this audit, we engaged in widespread discussions within the Central Bank in order that we might understand what is happening. This is one of the issues that has arisen. We realised that the banks were assuming that the Central Bank was against interest-only arrangements. Of course we are opposed to situations in which banks say to people, "Make interest-only repayments for a year and then come back to us". We are certainly against such scenarios, because proper solutions must be arrived at. We are not opposed to the kind of solution under discussion. This may be news to some of the people who operate at the coalface within the banks. Obviously, it is not just a single point of contact and many discussions take place. There are thousands of cases involved.