Mr. Eddie Cullen:

Ulster Bank has sold loan books, as the committee will be aware, the last being what we called Oyster in 2016. We engaged extensively with stakeholders and farm bodies at the time of that sale and our obvious preference is to work with customers and help them find solutions. Ulster Bank was not part of NAMA and we have had to repair our balance sheet over the past ten years of the crisis, which we have done in terms of business banking.

Our book is now substantially a good book from a business banking perspective. That has been a very important part of the recovery and our ability to continue to make credit available in this market, as we have been doing in recent years. We have worked extensively with all stakeholders to the extent that there were farmers involved in the loan sales, which were very small numbers in percentage terms. I think it was about 4% in the last loan sale that we did in 2016.