Mr. David Duffy:

I am not being released just yet, despite my relaxed demeanour. I am in a position though, however, to say that from my involvement with NAMA, which was necessarily close both in terms of asset transfers that had happened and the ongoing servicing of the residual assets for which the staff of AIB were still retained, I think the experience I had was that it was extremely helpful to us in our ability ... the scale of what we had to do ... when you look back, it was extraordinary - the volume, complexity and concurrent nature of it and I think it was of immense assistance to AIB that we had that circumstance where we were able to execute all of our other initiatives with the support of our involvement in NAMA. Also, the NAMA exercise for us gave us a better understanding on crystallisation of losses, of what the capital deficit was and what necessary actions needed to be taken. So from the narrow view of our execution relationship with NAMA, I would have to say that on balance it was beneficial.