Mr. Pat Farrell:

Senator Conway-Walsh is correct in saying that there has been a huge evolution in the way risk is managed and governed within banks since the crisis. If I take the case of the bank, we have a governance structure which is very focused on risk. It flows right from the court of directors- the board itself. We have a court risk committee. It is a dedicated sub-committee of the board. Their responsibility - they are all non-executive directors - is to maintain oversight of the group's overall risk profile. They also ensure that the bank is adhering to the group's risk principles, which are reviewed regularly, its policies and all of its standards. They also monitor all of the risk elements of any due diligence appraisal of any mergers or acquisitions that we might do.

They have very strong oversight and comprise non-executive directors of the bank. There is also a group risk policy committee, which is comprised of senior management. It maintains oversight of all the group-wide divisional control functions. I could go on. There is quite an elaborate structure.

The other thing I would add on the question Senator O'Donnell asked about the safety of banks is that there have been significant changes. The amount of capital that banks are now required to hold is significantly higher than it was at the time of the crisis. Bank of Ireland has robust and strong capital ratios and adequate buffers. These are regularly overseen and reviewed by the single supervisor in Frankfurt, the local Central Bank and by regulators in the UK and the other markets we work in. Another feature of that, as the committee is probably aware, is all banks were required to change their legal structures so they would be fully resolvable or recoverable in the future if there was any prospect or likelihood of failure. Bank of Ireland, in common with other banks, has changed its legal structure which provides further safeguards both for taxpayers, if we reflect back to the previous period, and for customers as well. A whole series of changes have taken place as I said, with the governance structure on risk in the bank, with the changes to the legal structure of the bank and the requirements for the holding of capital.