Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate that. However, I am just saying if anyone is under that impression, it is an illusion.

On the Department or the Minister for Finance intervening in the banks to ensure that credit flows, if the thing is not working as we intend it to work, if that fundamental first purpose set out in the purposes section of the legislation is not being achieved, of course we will have to intervene again. If we must intervene again, we will not necessarily have to use a different vehicle. A bank, if it is to stay in existence for any time at all, must act as a bank whether one calls it a good bank, a bad bank or an indifferent bank. That is the reality of life.

Senator Harris and other Senators mentioned the question of those who, unfortunately, are running into arrears with their mortgages. The Government is conscious of that situation and has discussed it at the Cabinet table. The Government has already announced that it is taking measures to deal with that and in the measures we are taking and in the way we will implement those measures, we will have recourse to the expertise of NAMA and the National Treasury Management Agency.

I reiterate that the Attorney General's advice and the advice of the parliamentary draftsman is that "may" is the appropriate terminology here because the Minister intends to introduce guidelines but he may want to introduce guidelines at different times to deal with different sectoral credit problems as they arise.