Mr. Richie Boucher:

It is correct that we are a commercial business, but it is very important to us that our business is from Ireland. We would not have a future as a business if Ireland, as a country, did not have a robust and strong economy. We were supported by the taxpayer so we had a couple of criteria. We had to survive. What did survival mean? It meant that we participated in supporting economic recovery whilst we repaid the taxpayer. It is, and has been, extremely important to us in Bank of Ireland that we do not decide how the taxpayers' money is spent. The taxpayers should never have been put in a position that they had to invest in Bank of Ireland, so we worked hard to ensure that the cash went back quickly. We had to take difficult decisions to run a business to ensure, first, that the taxpayers got back €6 billion in cash. That is €6 billion in cash from Bank of Ireland. None of the other banks has done that. That €6 billion means that either tax rates can be kept lower or more services can be provided.

For the economy as a whole, we must take into consideration our reputation in wider society and our ability to support the economy. We must have capital and the provision of capital to us should never come from taxpayers but from the private sector. However, our private sector investors are investing for the long term. We have sold the bank to private sector investors on the basis of the growth story in Ireland and the growth story in our bank. We have clearly set out to our investors our ambition to lend into this economy and support it, because if we do not support the economy we do not achieve our financial and business objectives. That is as simply put as I can put it. We have a responsibility to support the economy in a way that makes commercial sense.