Mr. Simon Carswell:

At that point assets were backed by residential mortgages so investors looked at the quality of the assets backing their bonds, so what was the quality of the loans that were packaged up in these bonds that were being sold in the money markets to raise more money to lend by the banks. At that time, a lot of assets that the Irish banks used were backed by residential mortgages. They were regarded as much more likely to be repaid, therefore of better quality. By including commercial mortgages in those packages of bonds the banks were following an international trend. There were other countries doing that. What that did was it allowed, for example, in particular, Anglo, because it had more commercial mortgages than other banks, to be able to package them up, go to the market and say, "Invest in our bond, buy our debt," and subsequently they would get money in and be able to use it to lend on into the banks.

I think one of the issues raised during the lobbying for that Bill was raised by the regulatory authorities which said that there was greater inherent volatility by comparison with other asset classes in terms of valuation and default experience. So that legislation was passed in the face of some opposition from the regulatory authorities.