Mr. Jim Brown:

Branches are vitally important to Ulster Bank and play a key role from a community perspective, as Deputy Pearse Doherty mentioned, and in terms of interaction with the bank for business, as well as retail customers. The way customers interact with the bank is changing rapidly. Last year Ulster Bank processed 200 million transactions for our customers. Some 22% of these transactions were processed through branches, 45% through new technology such as mobile applications and the Internet, while the rest were processed through ATMs, etc. The change in the branch network is driven significantly by changes in customer behaviour. We expect the traditional branch network to reduce over time, but we also expect an increase in other physical points of presence such as kiosks, mini branches or tie-ups with third parties. There is a change in customer behaviour. We are making significant investments in serving the customer through the changes they want. The way people interact through branches is evolving. We are doing things aside from investing in technology to support this; for example, our call centre has gone 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the beginning of August. We have not communicated this widely, but a sizable number of customers are ringing through that channel and we are doing other things also. We would be happy to engage in a discussion to investigate the details of Deputy Pearse Doherty's proposal. We would be happy to participate.