Mr. Ciarán Coyle:

I recognise and relate to the point about challenges in rural areas compared to urban areas. With regard to the way we are thinking about our branches, if it helps the committee, we have 88 branches, we have mobile banks, community bankers, community protection advisers and mobile mortgage managers. As Ms Howard said, there are physical and digital services. The statistics show us that increasing numbers of people choose to engage with the mobile application, Internet banking or contactless cards for transactional activities. We will continue to invest and we need to invest to secure that, upgrade systems and stay in line with regulatory changes. New innovators in non-banks are coming into the markets. We have invested tens of millions of euro in physical spaces in branches in the last couple of years, across a host of measures. One is to put broadband into all of them. Of the 88, 86 are done. The role of the branch and what will happen inside it will invariably continue to change. It will be less transactional. The transaction capability will be there but it is more about supporting customers to give them advice, insight or help.