Professor Eamonn Walsh:

There are a couple of aspects to that question. I have glossed over a lot of the technical detail with respect to these impairments but I would be delighted to go through that technical detail.

Basically, impairment assessment could occur in a number of ways. First, there is the level of individual loans. Second, one might look at groups of loans. That would be the case if one considered something like a mortgage book where it would probably be very challenging to go through each and every mortgage and assess it individually for impairment. One would be essentially engaged in a group assessment of impairment for those loans. One can view it that we could look at loans in groups and then individual assessments of loans. There are detailed rules with respect to how one conducts that assessment.