Mr. Gavin Kelly:

When we made some changes last year, which were discussed at length at the committee at the time, the changes were made based on what we saw in the market and the changes that were mentioned earlier around digital take-up by customers. It was very important to us on a couple of fronts. One was to protect our footprint in 265 locations across the State, and to make sure we were providing the right services for the community. As part of our change last year, between 800 to 1,000 staff were put out to support communities. The committee will have come across this as it was referenced last year by the Senator. The bank has been out and about supporting the community and running enterprise events in schools right across the country. The remaining staff were in the branch networks.

The changes were made based on what we saw. We had 265 locations and 100 of those are now self-service and advice branches and will remain so. Before we made the change, typically in those branches we would have seen 20 to 30 over the counter transactions per day. A teller has the capacity to handle a lot more transactions than that during the day. As part of the change we moved the teller from inside behind a pane of glass to outside, onto the floor of the branch, to meet the customers' needs and requirements. Some 99% of transactions that happen in branches are lodgements and withdrawals. These transactions can now be done at our self-service machines in the 100 branches and can also be done 24-7 at the external lodgement ATM.

The change referred to by Ms McDonagh earlier was around the middle group of branches, where in approximately 100 branches we close the cash transactions at 12.30 p.m. When we spoke to customers after this change they told us that this was confusing. We got that part wrong so we have changed it and are now extending the opening hours in those branches until 4 p.m. every day. Now it is a simpler model where we have two branch types in the business: 165 branches with the full traditional teller service and the other-----