Mr. Jim Brown:

We are active supporters of the economy in the Republic. Across the island of Ireland, two thirds of our lending goes to the Republic. Last year, we lent €1.4 billion to business and gave €900 million of new lending to mortgages. We are active in supporting businesses and the mortgage market too. That trend in lending has continued into this year. We are looking to increase our lending by another 30% over and above what we lent last year.

However, we will be very prudent about the lending we will be doing. We realised the role we play in the market but we do not want to get ourselves into the situation that we were previously.