*  *  *  Today the Central Bank announces additional capital requirements for four banks covered by Government guarantee, namely Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks, Irish Life and Permanent and EBS Building Society.
Clearly, therefore, the forces that drove the rise in household debt ratios were not unique to Australia. The two biggest contributing factors were financial deregulation and the structural decline in interest rates. One of the consequences of financial deregulation was that the availability of credit to households greatly increased.