Mr. Pierce Butler:

I thank the Chairman and committee for the invitation to speak here today. I will give a general overview and then hand over to my colleague, Mr. Farrell, to talk specifically about the supports we are providing for customers in the farming sector.

Bank of Ireland is the largest lender to the Irish economy, having lent €14.1 billion during 2017, and has been lending more than 50% of the new lending flow into the sector. We also have the largest retail bank network in Ireland with more than 250 branches throughout the country, which demonstrates how strongly we are embedded in communities. While retaining our branch network we have also made changes to how we serve our customers by enabling our staff to become more mobile in their communities and to meet our business and farmer customers at their premises and farms. This mobility and agility is more convenient from a customer perspective and gives our staff the opportunity to better understand each customer's business and how best we can meet their banking needs. We have a mobile lending team of more than 115 people, including dedicated agrispecialists available to support colleagues and customers with individual funding requests. We also provide direct lending over the phone, lending to business customers, including farmers. The direct lending service provides loans of up to €120,000 to customers without the customer having to come into a branch. Our unique combination of a great digital presence and a footprint in 250 communities across the country means we can be more responsive to, and flexible in meeting, our customers' needs.

The committee may have seen recent announcements that the bank created 100 new customer-facing roles earlier in the year as part of an overall strategy to increase the number of people in customer-facing roles. We have also announced that 100 branches are being upgraded so that there will be an all-day counter service in those branches. We have listened carefully to feedback from our customers to understand how we could improve the service we provide and have taken these steps as a result of that.

I will now hand over to my colleague, Mr. Farrell.