Ms Dara Deering:

April for new customers and July for existing customers. If the customer in question applied after April 2008, the bank would not have had any tracker product, never mind a fixed tracker product, for example. As Mr. Verbraeken said, we tried to take a policy decision considering where we believe the flyer might have been used in conversations. Obviously, we cannot rule out where it was or was not used.

We believe, however, that it is most appropriate and reasonable to expect that it may have been used as part of the sales process and that is why we have taken an application date. There may be some cases around the edges, and clearly we will look at them on an individual basis, but the policy is to apply it where we believe it is most reasonable and consistent from a consumer perspective. As with the other 90% of customers who went from a fixed rate to a tracker, we have applied the same criteria to these customers who went from a fixed rate to a standard variable rate.