Professor Eamonn Walsh:

From what we have seen, I think the Central Bank of Ireland does deserve some praise. It has actually issued additional guidance to banks in terms of their disclosures on their loan books, in particular disclosures on impairments. If we were to look at the financial statements of the larger banks in Ireland today, we would find that there were much more copious disclosures of impairments, of loans past due and so on and it would be much easier for an informed user to make a sensible judgment on what was going on with a loan book at a point in time. I think that, largely, the difficulty is that international accounting standards are aimed at all enterprises.

One needs some sort of regulatory overlay, or some other overlay, which requires them to disclose more information, in a sensible manner, to investors.