Mr. Liam McLoughlin:

The background to the change in contact centres has been driven by the fact that most branch staff are engaging in face-to-face contact and, therefore, are not in a position to be able to pick up telephones to deal with other customers directly. The general sense we have from our feedback is that it is better to have the ability to speak to customers when they want. For this reason, we use contact centres, predominantly in Kilkenny, to support our engagement with customers there and then.