Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well I think ... basically, we're out of tools now. I have no new tools to propose in this area. What's happening now is a progress through the courts, unfortunately, and that's a very protracted process. It will resolve this issue over time. It's taking much longer but I have no new proposals to make at this stage on that. I think ... you know, often when I come to the Oireachtas committees, I find one side of the story is, Deputies, and perhaps understandably, concerned about the distress in which heavily-indebted families and SME owners are, and they want deeper debt restructuring, which I also do, and they want more time to be given, etc., etc. But there is another side to it and that is constantly from outside Ireland, particularly in troika people, they would've pressed for much faster, "If you can't get this loan repaid, repossess." There would've been very much that pressure all the time, which we resisted and some people may think that we have erred on the side of causing a longer delay because we have resisted the faster repossession route.