Ms Francesca McDonagh:

With respect, I recognise the Deputy's perspective. He talked about the manner in which we do business. The manner in which we do business is that we are the largest lender to the Irish economy. We have been for the past ten years. We have a 1.7 million customer base. We are the largest lender, with more than 50% of the market share, to Irish small and medium enterprise, SMEs. Last year, we had a 30% reduction in complaints about, for example, current accounts, which is the manner in which many customers will engage with us. We were seeing the highest level on the net promoter score, which is an industry way of measuring satisfaction. We have also fundamentally changed the culture of our colleagues, going from a very low level to leading global financial services benchmarks in terms of our colleagues' engagement and the cultural embedding. The manner in which we run our bank is as a competitive entity and we take great pride in how we support our customers, colleagues and communities.

In response to the mortgage pricing, we often see comparisons with other banks in Europe that would offer, say, a 1% mortgage. The Deputy will see that our rates would vary. They are fixed rates. In terms of the latest on our pricing, we would see a green mortgage, for example, being approximately 2.6%; Mr. Kelly can confirm that. I would make a few comparisons here. One is that many other bank markets like the UK have an application fee which is not included in the interest rate but is an effective charge. We do not have application fees here. It would not be unusual to see fees of £999 or £2,000 for a fixed rate long-term mortgage so that comparison does not exist.

Another key element to the Deputy's point is around the capital requirement. In Ireland, the risk ratings attached to Irish mortgages for 2020 was circa 30%. That would compare to a market like the UK, which is at 10%, or Portugal and Italy, which are at approximately 17% and 20% respectively. The more capital that is associated with a loan, the more expensive it is to basically provide that finance. Then, as a result of the historical performance of Irish mortgages-----