Mr. John Moran:

It certainly is a very difficult issue. I am getting all the difficult questions today. I have seen an earlier draft of the Mercer report and one question we asked the consultancy to consider was to gauge the remuneration in the State-owned banks against those of the broader sector because one thing that is important is that we can continue to deal with the State-owned or Government-supported banks, which therefore would include Bank of Ireland, in a way that does not create a disadvantage for them. Consequently, if in fact there are dichotomies of pay between the State-owned banks and those in the broader banking or financial services sectors, this issue must be considered. On the other hand, we have banks that have not yet returned to profitability and, therefore, this also must be taken into account when the management of the banks consider the road to profitability - towards which we encourage them to go - to make sure they are, in effect, treating the compensation issue with that backdrop against the situation. We clearly have this situation in a lot of other areas and other sectors because the competition is not just between people working for the State-owned banks and the broader financial services but also applies to those who are going to join any of the other industry sectors in which work is available at present.