Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The committee is discussing the banking sector in Ireland with Allied Irish Banks, AIB. I welcome Mr. David Duffy, chief executive of AIB, who is accompanied by Mr. Mark Bourke, chief financial officer, Mr. Bernard Byrne, director of retail and business banking, and Mr. Brendan O'Connor, head of the financial solutions group. The format of the meeting will be that Mr. Duffy will make some opening remarks. In advance of the meeting, we collected questions from members of the committee and submitted these to AIB. I thank Mr. Duffy and his staff for responding in writing to these, which we received on Monday. The responses have been distributed to members. Together with the input of our witnesses today, I hope that all the key topics will have been covered. Nonetheless, a question and answer session will follow to clarify any matters after Mr. Duffy has made his opening statement.

Before I proceed further, I express the committee's regret to Mr. Duffy and his staff that his opening statement and answers to the committee questionnaire were given, unknown to the committee, to the media before he had an opportunity to discuss them in person with the committee today. I now ask Mr. Duffy to make a short opening statement.