Mr. Conor O'Kelly:

Ultimately, markets are preparing for a normalisation of interest rates in an environment where central banks are not as active in the market in relation to these kinds of programmes. We tend to look at everything from a worst case scenario in that regard but we do believe that interest rates are likely to go higher, yield curves are likely to go steeper and credit spreads are likely to go wider. That will have an impact on us in the medium term and will make it more difficult to get the number down, that the Deputy mentioned, from the €10 billion that was forecast to the €7 billion to the €6 billion to €5 billion. We cannot predict what will happen but our working assumption is that rates could go higher when quantitative easing stops and that encourages us to pre-fund now as much as possible to take advantage of the low rate environment.