Mr. Michael Torpey:

RBS exercised a very significant degree of control over Ulster Bank. There can be no doubt about that. The reporting line ... I did, as you say, report to the CEO locally and to the finance director of the RBS Group, and that's very consistent with the pattern that you will typically see in a multinational organisation. The conduct of the finance function, which was my brief, was driven very strongly through the RBS Group where we had to apply the standards, the controls, the processes, even the reporting timelines, that fit within the RBS Group requirements, so it is absolutely true to say there was a very strong degree of RBS Group control.

The advantage that you have, I suppose, in the licensed bank situation that Ulster Bank was ... within Ireland, is in addition to that control exercised by RBS Group, you had an independent board of Ulster Bank and Ulster Bank Ireland Limited here, which had duty of oversight to ensure that the bank complied with statutory reporting and governance and was fit for the local conditions, so it conveyed the advantage of the strength of the control environment of a multinational group together with the oversight of a local independent board to act as a check and balance on the behaviours ... within the Irish context.