Mr. Bernard Byrne:

I will give a general comment and my colleague, Mr. Robert Mulhall will pick up anything that I miss or leave behind.

Certainly the issue of credit availability for SMEs was a very significant topic a few years back in terms of the general level of discontent around whether banks had made credit available. At this point in time that is much lower down the list and the surveys that exist will support this. From our point of view, what we have done and what we continue to try to do is deal with the speed at which credit decisions get made. One of the key issues that has affected people is decisions taking a very long time, which they interpreted as a slow "No", but not giving a person a decision at all. Hence our commitment, and we mentioned it in the opening address, to the turnaround times for small loans, that is a loan for under €30,000, which is 90% of all SMEs loans, is 48 hours. Our approval rate for SME loans is 94%.

Basically, we are saying that SMEs should apply, it is a very short process, the document that an AIB customer has to fill out is very small, about three or four pages. We are encouraging AIB customers to fill out the application and we can track what happens. If the SME customer does not like the bank's decision, there are many mechanisms available, both internal to the bank and also the Credit Review Office. There is professional machinery that works and will deal with the customer when a loan decision or an investment is declined. We will always work, and have always worked with the decision of the Credit Review Office and implemented the solution that has come out of that process.

The numbers that take those routes are very low, but it is very difficult to deal with the anecdote. It is very difficult to deal with people who say they did not apply because they knew the bank would say "No". In terms of encouragement to people, the first priority should be for them to apply for a loan. I would not be too concerned if our approval rates dropped because more people applied. At least that would be evidence and information with which we could do something. The first issue is to try to ensure that everyone applies. If we the bank end up saying "No", there is an appeals process and a Credit Review Office. That is important.

In the second point about the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, we engage very actively with it and in terms of its loans, we put in place a €200 million facility. We utilised it very quickly and then we actually drew down another €200 million, that is €400 million in total. The last time I saw a statistic on it, some 90% of all the loans that were being sanctioned through SBCI were through AIB. We have the highest level of penetration by far of any bank. We have embraced it. As I also mentioned in my statement, we are working on the agri-fund at this stage which will have subsidised funding and we hope to be the first to market with that fund.