Mr. Jeremy Masding:

I bid the Deputy good afternoon and thank him for his questions. He raises a number of different points. First, regarding the upgrade by the external credit rating agencies, I ask the Deputy not to forget that it is from an enormously low base. We are still trying to get up the curve to a place where the rating represents what the Deputy would call a low cost of funds in the capital market. Our rating is still very low.

Even if I were able to go out to the market for, in very simple language, an unsecured credit line, our credit rating would mean that the price for that would be a lot higher than the Deputy might think it is. Our credit rating is very low.

If we move to other sources of funding, I cannot comment on AIB's funding mix or pricing. It would be inappropriate of me to do so. I remind the committee that we were criticised regularly, and I suspect openly if I recall correctly, by the troika for the funding gap that this organisation had post-PCAR and for the level of life support that we were relying on from the European Central Bank. To get that down over a couple of years from 55% to 15% suggests that my chief financial officer and treasurer did a great job. That is the next bit of the funding mix.

If we then move to the next level of the balance sheet, which we can call retail and corporate deposits, the price we pay for retail and corporate deposits still remains elevated versus what one might expect. That is something we will have to manage and by "we" I mean the Irish banking community and not just Permanent TSB, over the coming months.

By doing all of those things - I am focusing particularly on Permanent TSB - I want to be in a position where we can share some of that benefit with the asset side of the balance sheet. However, it would be irresponsible of me to put the asset side of the balance sheet before the liability side. That is not how I run a bank. I want to get my cost of imports right because that makes the bank stable. Then I will pass the benefits onto the asset side of the balance sheet. That is what we are committed to doing.