Mr. Ed Sibley:

I will make one broad point before dealing with specifics. We in the Central Bank and more broadly in the wider European regulatory system are very focused on what we do not know, the assumptions that we are making and the risks that are out there. Different things will emerge to those which emerged previously and different mistakes will be made.

On specifics, as the Deputy and the Governor have observed, much attention is being paid in this area. The last time I was at the supervisory board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, SSM, there was a specific discussion around leveraged finance following on from work that was done a year earlier. It looked across all the large European banks to see how active they are in the area, how much is staying on balance sheet, how much is being moved off balance sheet, what are the risks associated with it, what are the underwriting standards and how we can then look at it at a thematic level across the system. At a more local level, from an Irish perspective, we would look at the extent to which the banks operating here are active in this market. It is most definitely something we are attuned to and alive to, recognising all those warning signals to which the Deputy referred.