Dr. Colin Hunt:

The financial crisis that beset the world 13 or 14 years ago was not peculiar to Ireland. The losses we experienced here were higher than were experienced elsewhere. That would have been grounded in a lack of prudent lending and ungrounded optimism on the part of the banks. I am deeply conscious of the damage that was done to the economy and banking sector as a consequence of imprudent lending. We are determined to ensure that it never ever happens again.

One of the key drivers of everything we have done in recent years has been ensuring that we would enter the next crisis in a position of strength. We are very conscious of the fact that this is a bank that entered the global financial crisis in a position of great weakness. That great weakness ultimately led to the bank requiring a bailout from the Irish taxpayer to the tune of €20.9 billion. Over the intervening years we have focused on building the strength of the bank, lending prudently and appropriately and ensuring that we had very strong capital position to deal with the next crisis.

We had absolutely no foresight that the crisis would come in the form of a global pandemic. We entered the crisis in a position of great strength. We are one of the most strongly capitalised banks in the European Union, notwithstanding the fact that the risk weights we alluded to elsewhere are fairly high relative to other European financial markets and countries across the eurozone. That is what allowed us to support our customers and deploy 77,000 payment breaks at a time of great uncertainty.

We are deeply conscious of the errors in lending made in the past, more than 13 or 14 years ago and, in some instances, earlier than that. We are committed to ensuring that those errors are never again repeated while remaining conscious of our responsibilities as a pillar bank in supporting the ongoing development of the Irish economy.