Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

That is a fair approach. People who are running tight operations should not find that they are being charged the same as people who are being more risky. The wider point I raised concerns the Minister's view that there is a risk that one of the problems inhibiting the availability of credit at the moment is that regulators are moving towards taking a fairly tight view of things. I could understand if this was a risky class of investment, such as more development investment, because we are already so exposed in that area that the notion of investment in development land would certainly constitute an area where very high capital ratios should be applied. On the other hand, can we say that one of the reactions to this is too tight an approach to credit? Maybe there is a case in looking at liquidity ratios, capital ratios and so on in respect of new credit. Maybe now is the time to be supporting the issue of credit, making the banks more willing to take risks rather than being more willing to avoid risks.

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