Dr. Colin Hunt:

The original driver of this was when we surveyed our staff in July of last year. At that stage we were three or four months into working from home. The vast majority of the team of my colleagues here at AIB wanted to continue to work partly from home once the pandemic was behind us and we returned to whatever was normal in the future. We have decided that we will accommodate people to allow them to work from home three days per week and then to work in offices two days per week. The savings that the release of office spaces would generate are very important in underpinning the bank's strategic plan to generate a return of greater than 8% on our tangible equity in 2023. We will work with our staff members to ensure that they have all of the equipment they need in a home environment to work from home and we have done that.

On the issue of the savings being generated by exiting properties, that really underpins the long-term viability of the bank and our ability to continue to compete and to serve our customers. We worked at pace to accommodate that. We asked 80% of our colleagues to work from home and we worked at pace to ensure they had the technology and equipment they needed to do so.