Mr. Aidan Carrigan:

The development of banking union is a rolling process. It is not a big bang on a particular date to the effect that yesterday we had nothing and tomorrow we have a comprehensive banking union. The process in Europe is to build this banking union framework. I noted that we have put in place a single supervisory mechanism. This initiative was introduced at record speed by European standards in that Europe was only tasked to come up with a proposal last summer and we now have in place an agreed legislative framework for the single supervisory mechanism and a commencement date of early 2014 for the single supervisor. The capital requirements directive we have just agreed at European level will demand that we keep new and consistent capital requirements across Europe. That directive will come into effect in mid-2014, with rolling implementation beyond that date. We hope the resolution measures will also be introduced in or around that time. Over the coming two to three years, therefore, we will see substantial developments in the European framework to protect against situations like the banking crisis arising in the future.

As regards the Irish institutions, we are not able to comment on specific institutions. It is, however, in the public domain that Irish banks are showing signs of recovery. They are now raising funds independently and we expect the recovery process will continue so that they will be in a position at some stage to consider their position vis-à-vis their debts.