Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an bhfinné as an gcur i láthair. I thank Ms McDonagh for the presentation so far. The line that hops off it for me is the one which states: "We stand alone as the only majority privately owned Irish retail bank." That is the elephant in the room here. It shows the continuing disaster, which is the Irish banking market, that we are so amiss with competition within this particular sector. Mario Draghi said that the Irish banking market is a quasi-monopoly. He is not far wrong on that. That quasi-monopoly status allows Bank of Ireland to operate in the manner that it does because customers have no option in many ways but to do business with Bank of Ireland in the manner they do.

Ms McDonagh mentioned the transition of people from physical banking to online banking but I would posit that Bank of Ireland has actively sought to push people out of bank branches in the past number of years. Seven or ten years ago there would have been ten spaces for people to work with tellers. That was very quickly reduced to one and people were left 20 deep in queues trying to get near the teller and so on. There was an active project to reduce customers coming into banks in the past number of years and that has, in part, led to the transition to online banking.

The cuts in the number of bank branches in the country are savage and they will have a savage effect on Irish society. It is deeply disappointing given the quasi-monopoly position Bank of Ireland has within the particular sector. My first question is on the differential in the mortgage interest rate in Ireland vis-à-visthat in other European countries. Ms McDonagh mentioned capital requirements and the risk effect in part accounting for that differential. What proportion of differential is accounted for through capital requirements and the risk effect? Does Bank of Ireland's quasi-monopoly status also add to that differential?