Mr. Willie Soffe:

As I tried to explain earlier, the troika, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, wanted the loans paid down quickly. There was no question that Ireland could wait until 2020 to pay back the €30.2 billion. They wanted it as quickly as possible. A target was set of €7.5 billion by the end of 2013 which, given the difficulty we had so early on in sales, was a very stretched target but we met it. Then, when the opportunity arose starting towards the end of 2013 for loan sales where we could bundle and sell large groups of assets, we looked at it very seriously. That is why we reached a sum of €9.1 billion for redemption in 2014 and €10 billion since then up to now. There were a number of reasons we wanted to pay off the debt as quickly as possible, one of which was pressure from the European bodies. It was also being said to us at Government level all the time, and through the NTMA, that bringing down the debt substantially helped the Government's borrowing.