Mr. John O'Connell:

We engaged with AIB last week. It acted responsibly earlier in the pandemic. It had plans to reduce the head count but it paused that. It acted responsibly in pausing it and saying it would re-engage in that respect. It has re-engaged and has indicated it will fully engage with us on our proposals. It outlined its proposals in the public domain and indicated that the model it wishes to follow is to reach agreement with us. Change is inevitable but, as I said at the start of my presentation, how change comes about is the key for staff and customers alike. AIB indicated it will engage with us and we believe it will. We also have an agenda of matters that are important to us. For instance, the staff in AIB work the longest hours. People want job security, certainty and a commitment around branch networks. We tabled all these issues with AIB in the past few days and will engage with it. It did not come to us with a baked cake and said this is what is happening. It came to us and said what it wants to do on the basis that it believes it is the right thing for the bank. It now wants to sit down, discuss and negotiate with us on it. That is what we believe is the appropriate method of bringing about change in any sector but particularly in banking.

In terms of Ulster Bank, we are hoping that the Minister will meet NatWest, as he indicated to us, and out of that we hope it will provide clarity and we can return to where we were with Ulster Bank last July when we met it and it shared with us financial details around the bank and what it wanted to achieve. That would not be without pain for some of our colleagues but we believed we could sit down and negotiate with it. However, while we were doing that it was engaged in a review elsewhere that has obviously pulled a rug underneath those discussions. We hope the Minister will meet NatWest, get us back on track and get us back to a position where we can sit down and discuss the future of Ulster Bank and what has to happen, just as we are doing with the other banks. We hope we can come to a position that retains the bank but also brings about the kind of change with which we can all live.