Mr. David Duffy:

I am not sure that I can say that there's any safe level of growth because I don't think growth targets are the criteria by which you would manage a bank. I think you have a simple ... when you wake up in the morning running a bank you worry about liquidity, No. 1. Secondly you worry about capital and they are the two priorities.

If you are going to lend, you have to have a threshold minimum of capital, which is not just the minimum regulatory capital but is probably that plus a buffer, where you would look to have a very conservative view on a stressed environment as to what that capital could become. And that is your starting point. You can then determine what your lending can be, providing that it doesn't breach those hurdles. Secondly, your lending composition has to be understood in terms of your funding. The history of lending had no regard necessarily to the composition of funding and you have two choices: retail longer term sticky funding as it is referred to, and wholesale funding. If it is a short term, as wholesale often is and can be subject to flight in a very quick fashion as happened in Ireland, then long-term lending without short-term funding is going to put you significantly at risk.

So I think you start off with two very careful principles - what is the minimum threshold of capital - which when in a stressed environment based on rapid asset deterioration, what is that level you should maintain - and is your funding correlated to that profile? If you have confidence in those two then you can set a target of growth which doesn't breach either of those two objectives. So I would never start with a number, I would start with the capital and the funding and then allow myself grow according to those definitions.