Mr. Cormac Butler:

At the time the tied agents signed into the contracts, approximately 80% of their commission came from mortgages and approximately 20% came from investment products. As we know, the EBS got into liquidity and solvency difficulties. As a result, the mortgage commission went down to close to zero. That was a decrease of close to 80%. My view is that if this was not expressly stated in the contract, the EBS should have alerted the tied agents as far back as 2005 that there were potential liquidity problems on the basis that if the EBS was unable to fund the mortgages, the agents' entire income would come from investment income. Apart from putting a strain on the tied agents, there was a risk that if their income depended solely on investment income, they would be tempted to sell products which were unsuitable to customers. This would have put the tied agents into a difficult situation. If they went along with this and kept their heads down low, they might have kept their jobs, but they would have been risking their reputations and creating damage for potential costumers with this new approach. My view is that the EBS should have said in 2005, and certainly in 2008, that it would have to deal with potential liquidity difficulties. It should have consulted the agents in that context to say that the contracts which had been signed would have to change considerably.