Mr. Bernard Byrne:

I will take the question. We have never come out with a number so any numbers that are in the system are media numbers. The number mentioned by Deputy Doherty is not one we have ever used.

Last August we started a programme to look at whether there was an issue in the bank associated with tracker mortgages. As we developed through the programme we determined that there was an issue and there are two parts to it. One is that in certain situations customers had, or should have reasonably been entitled to think, that they had a contractual right to a tracker. The second part is that there is probably a larger group of those we confused, or where the documentation was confusing or our communication with them was misleading. There are those two cohorts. As the work progressed, the Central Bank came out with a framework in December and we brought the two programmes together. In July we announced that we were starting to communicate with the first group of customers that we had brought through the whole programme at that stage and we put them on to the correct rate. The number of customers we are talking about in that circumstance is approximately 2,600.

As we have progressed, this month we are engaging with customers in terms of actually fixing those balances. We changed the rate and now we are fixing the balances and before the year end, in respect of those customers we expect to have resolved all items and issues, subject to the fact that they have appeals rights and that there may be other issues that need to be investigated. In respect of that group, which is the majority of the customers, we expect to be through that, so it is a slightly different number but I am just giving the context of where we are at. We have not completed all of the work in respect of that at this stage and it will run into the early part of next year in terms of conclusion of that programme.

The provision that we have we announced last year and we still remain confident it is the correct provision so we have no change in respect to it. Based on the work we have done at this point in time our assessment, knowing what we know - we have not fully engaged with all of the customers so we do not know everything - in respect of people's homes, where the rate was an issue, we might have 14 customers where the home was lost as a result of the rate.

If I could add the context to that, because I think it is relevant, one of the reasons that we have written off €1.3 billion of debt and mortgage loans is that as we have engaged with customers, we have tried to right size their loan based on affordability. In situations where they could not afford the whole debt we therefore did a write off. So the historic rate that existed on the product was not hugely relevant all the time in terms of the position that they were in. If they were in a modest amount of arrears or they could not afford the repayment we looked at a different solution, so a split mortgage, for example, would not have looked at the existing product offering, it looked at affordability and we tried to see whether we could do something.

In order to make sure that we were clear on the boundaries of what we were trying to do and not to make another mistake, problem and loss to the customer, we effectively expanded our definition of the criteria to apply for those products. Our solution for the 14 customers, which is the position as we know it at the moment, is based on an assessment that asks whether they would have been entitled to a forbearance solution. All of them would have a problem under any solution, and if we were applying a more expanded definition, a bigger boundary to that forbearance solution, would we have been able to come up with an answer which may have allowed us to progress? That is the full context to the number we have at the moment but until we conclude I will not be able to say definitively where we are at, but for the sake of the committee, that is where we are at today.