Mr. John Moran:

It is important to remember that when a loan is impaired the bank then has to set aside provisions for what it thinks it will lose in that loan. What is important with respect to the Irish banks, and this is what I referred to earlier, is how we can break through the numbers to understand where the reality sits. The asset quality review that was conducted by the Central Bank before Christmas, which is being repeated by it, involved bringing in external parties to assess the loans and the loan books and look at samples of those to decide whether the level of provisions the banks were holding against those was adequate for the risks. I cannot say exactly where it is because there is an element of judgment involved but what we see from the numbers is that with this third party validation, both of the auditors and the Central Bank, we do not have a one-for-one parallel between impairment and the provisions, which suggests that the banks are correct in the view that not all impaired loans will lead to 100% losses, but there is a percentage in that regard.