Mr. Fergus Murphy:

Yes, thank you, Deputy. The ... there were two efforts made to see whether or not Irish Life and Permanent and EBS, and then latterly, when Irish Life and Permanent and PTSB had decoupled, whether PTSB and EBS could merge with each other. This was the, the first effort when, obviously, Irish Life and Permanent was, was one unit. The, the thesis there and the objective there was to see was there a position where we could, again, in Ireland, have a, a third force by aggregating ... merging bank three and bank four, so to speak, and then having a viable organisation that would be not that dissimilar to an AIB or Bank of Ireland. So, that, that was the piece at the time, and we would have gone through work to, to validate that at the time.