Ms Catherine Moroney:

They had to apply for the jobs. They were people who were keen to do it and had an interest in it. By way of backdrop, we fully trained them. It is not that businesses are unaware of Brexit. It is that they are not sure what they have to do yet. We have a Brexit sentiment tracker to track the sentiment of our customers. We have done two of them now. They have told us that in some cases businesses are saying they cannot get ready for tariffs because they do not know if they will apply or not. They do not want to waste time and money on it. They have not prepared for anything that has not happened yet. A more immediate issue is that where they have currency exposures they are covering them. Not doing something is the same as doing something in terms of taking a risk. The Brexit advisers are doing a number of things. Having been trained and appointed to the role, they are working with our relationship managers and customers to advise and encourage them to speak to us about covering their hedging exposures. We have regular two-way briefs and updates with them. They listen to our updates on impacts on particular sectors. They give us feedback from the customer which means we stay close to the voice of the customer. That feedback goes to our Brexit board to ensure we are aware of what is happening right at the coalface.

Their role will continue into this year. We will have a number of events - we have had a number already - attended by several hundred customers around the country. They will continue to support bringing these events out into the community to our customers. The key thing is to be ready when we are aware of outcomes to know what the implications of these are for the different sectors and to be able to act with customers. They are there in readiness for what is coming and to encourage customers to do what they can, in terms of their currency exposure.