Mr. Jim O'Keeffe:

Mr. Byrne's point is that we have to be careful with regard to the bank getting into advice on rates. That has been a long-standing position for all the banks. I am conscious of the intent of trying to address the question but we need to be careful since we do not have the specifics in front of us. The customer would have taken out a loan in 2003, as the Deputy has outlined. At that point, the customer would have been made aware of all the rates. That would be part of the process. Then there would have been a set of terms and conditions and the running conditions of that product, which would set out what would happen over the intervening period. Tracker rates came in later in that period. When the bank introduced rates, it did not advise customers on rates because they could go either way. We all forget that tracker rates went the other way for a considerable period so that would have been incorrect advice to the customer. The key point is that the tracker was freely available to customers, had they chosen it in that period, but it was not attached to the original product that they would have taken out.