Mr. Richie Boucher:

In our case, we do our own internal stress testing. We ensure we have enough capital to protect ourselves and our depositors and to meet our strategic ambitions. The outcome of the stress tests did not come as a big surprise to Bank of Ireland because it had its own internal capital models; therefore, the availability of capital and funding for at least the past two years had not been an impediment to our lending desires. We had put out to the market that our strategic plan, our own internal stress testing, would have us lending approximately €33 billion in new money into the economy in the period from 2013 to 2017. Passing the stress tests was nice and it was an important part of the regulatory process, but it would not have had a material impact. Obviously, if we had failed, it would have had us in a very different context but passing did not mean that the desire or credit appetite changed.

One of the most important responsibilities I have relates to the fact that we have private sector capital, which was injected into Bank of Ireland. They were not people who felt sorry for the bank but people who believed in the Irish recovery and that the bank could participate in that recovery. They expect us to deploy that capital; that capital can only be constructively deployed by us in lending new money safely. A significant pressure on us as a management team is to safely deploy our shareholders' capital because if we do not deploy it appropriately, they will sell their shares and put the money where better opportunities can be found. That is how the private sector works. There is a significant strategic requirement on us to lend into the economy. What we must do is make sure it is safe and sustainable.