Ms Catherine Moroney:

Starting with deposit interest rates, if we seek to put money on deposit with the Central Bank, which we have to do overnight, it charges us. I might be out by a basis point or two, but in the past day or two it has been approximately -44 basis points. As a principle, we have decided not to charge our customers for that. We absorb the cost. We have very low 0.0 percentage rates on demand deposits, which go up slightly. They are not very high-earning accounts, but equally we do not charge customers for the privilege of leaving that money in a deposit account safely. The exception is in circumstances where someone comes to us outside of relationship banking. If a very large corporate came to us to put €20 million on deposit, it would be a one-to-one discussion. Clearly, it would be very expensive for us to hold that on our books.

We do not charge for all small and medium enterprises and businesses in Ireland. That addresses that side of the balance sheet.

On the loan side of the balance sheet, I will start with the comparison with Europe and then move to Ireland. It is difficult to get international comparisons for this. I will use Germany as an example and then move to our own specific price points. I will speak about Germany's general lending rate. I say "general" since the Senator mentioned credit risk himself and there are different credit risks in time, length of working capital and whether it is committed-----