Mr. Paul Dobey:

I'm not sure if AIB weren't aware of it, but there was a process in AIB where, towards the end of the year, they would process their loan loss provisions. We would've preferred that they did it throughout the year, but it was done towards the end of the year. There was a number of reasons why this was a practice we didn't ... we weren't particularly keen on. Firstly, as I've mentioned earlier, in a bank, the closer the relationship manager is to the loan, the greater the risk. So, in this instance, and the way ... the way banks manage that is by having approval processes and credit committees. In this case, we would have liked to have seen where loans were being written off, and I'm not saying there was a fraud, but there is an increased risk of fraud between the borrower and the lender ... the lending ... the relationship manager ... and the bank's controls on that was to have all write-offs or provisions go through a credit committee. There was obviously, I would say, a lot of work done towards the end of this particular year and credit provisions were processed. We would've been happy that they were processed timely but we would have preferred if they'd gone through the credit provisioning process ... the credit committee process. And one of the key... it's on the right hand side of that page ... one of the key matters ... what's really important about when credit provisions are taken is that there is learnings from that loan loss. So, if you advance a loan and then you have to take a provision against it, the most critical thing from the bank's perspective is that you learn the lessons from that loan. What was the problem? Why did this loan go bad? Was it the underwriting decision that was wrong? Was it the management of the loan over the period or whatever, right? So, as I said, the main purpose of the markup is to analyse the cause of the loss and to learn from our loss experience, in addition to confirming the appropriates of the provision. So it was those two things that we were pointing out. So you're absolutely right, this was something that we were, sort of, picking up and ... and improvements that we thought AIB could make.