Ms Fidelma Clarke:

It's ... with the benefit of hindsight, tracker mortgages were clearly a product that produced a very, very low return and didn't really include a risk premium. I think no one would argue with that with the benefit of hindsight. Again, unfortunately, I wasn't a member of the executive and wasn't involved in this strategy review or presentation or discussion. Certainly, when they were first introduced and, again, in an increasingly competitive environment, they ... I believe that people felt that the risk was lower because they typically were provided to customers with very ... or at the lower end of the loan-to-value spectrum so that there was some equation of how much risk are we taking in a loan and, therefore, what price should we charge for it? But, clearly, those two things diverged, given the economic environment which ensued. And EBS was involved in tracker mortgages albeit I believe to a substantially lesser extent than other institutions, as per Professor Nyberg's report. I think he quotes EBS having an exposure to tracker mortgages of 20% vis-à-vis50% in some of the other institutions.