Mr. Jim O'Keeffe:

The Chair will be pleased to know that on this occasion I am free to speak about the portfolio sale and I will be able to give some colour on it. To lead into it, over a period of time on the mortgages side, as we all know and committee members have heard us speak about it at a number of meetings, we had a lot of restructuring to do. We have restructured and put solutions in place for approximately 47,000 mortgage customers over a lengthy period of time. The good news is that of those we have in place more than 93% are performing and operating as agreed. This was a hugely important piece of work. As we discussed previously, alongside it we had some loan sales of other types of assets.

In addition to this, a few years ago with the organisation the Chair mentioned, iCare, we put in place and supported an enhanced mortgage to rent scheme. This has worked very well. At the point it was put in place, the entire industry had managed to complete only 250 cases in the preceding years. As of today, we have done as many as the entire industry had done at that period of time. This is hugely beneficial for AIB's customers.

We still had a group of mortgages that were not co-operating or engaging with us so we could restructure them. Within the residual mortgage population was a group of customers who, to be fair to them, were co-operating with us but we could not find a sustainable solution. There was no way we could amend their mortgages to make them sustainable. One of the options was to move to mortgage to rent and the Chair knows how this operates. Because we could not get engagement with the wider group of mortgage customers as we were agreeing to move forward on portfolio sales we created a separate portfolio. This broadly had customers who were co-operating with us but we could not identify a banking solution for them. We felt one of the most appropriate options might be mortgage to rent.

This was something we discussed at length with the committee the last time we came before it. I was looking at my notes. The Chair and others favoured an alternative approach to this issue. We agreed we would embrace and engage with the process, which we have done. We identified a group of approximately 650 mortgage holders in this category. We sought partners who would purchase these loans on the basis they would work with the customers to find sustainable solutions. A number of organisations came forward and we worked through it in a commercial and customer-centric fashion. We agreed to sell the loans to one of the consortia. This took place earlier this year. During the process, we worked to ensure the mortgages to rent in the pipeline were concluded. There was probably a difference because we were so advanced with mortgage to rent activity. It was something we had to embrace, unlike some others. In the round, this is what the portfolio looked like. It probably was groundbreaking not just for Ireland. It was probably groundbreaking internationally in terms of what we achieved. The customers who went as part of it should benefit from a good outcome. I hope this gives the Chair some clarity on it.