Mr. Dan O'Brien:

I might put that another way. Banks pay out interest on the money they borrow and they take in interest on the money they lend out. The money they take in in interest has been pushed down on average because of the tracker legacy, so the amount of money they are taking in is lower because of the tracker picture. On the other side, the amount they are paying has two components. One is the deposits, which is very low. Therefore, they are making a profit on that side, which is good.

They are in trouble with those famous bank bonds. As Irish banks were very risky, the interest rates they had to pay on those bonds was high and the money they were getting for all their loans was lower, so they were loss-making. However, because of QE in general in other countries and specifically since it started here, interest rates on Irish Government bonds are now ridiculously low. This means the average cost of interest the banks are paying out has fallen and if banks are put together in the aggregate, the domestic banks have come back to profitability. Much of that relates to the compression of bond yields for banks. Irish banks can now issue those bonds again at a very low rate of interest. Therefore, QE has certainly affected the banking system here in helping to bring it back to profitability. I hope that is reasonably clear.