Ms Helen Dooley:

The customers in question were entitled to choose another fixed interest rate mortgage, a standard variable rate, SVR, mortgage or a tracker interest rate mortgage at the prevailing rate. They had the option to choose, but we are stating there were then no tracker interest rate mortgages at the prevailing rate because we had withdrawn them in the circumstances outlined by Dr. Hunt. We did not foresee the consequences of that withdrawal.

The relevant date, to which Mr. Tom Kinsella alluded, when we determined the then prevailing tracker rate is the event of rolling off the fixed rate. It is not the date the customer takes out the loan. There was no credit in the bank and if when somebody rolled off a fixed rate, the tracker rate had gone down in the last few months, they would have got the lower tracker rate. Equally, if it had gone up, it was rate then prevailing on the event which was the rolling off the fixed rate.