Ms Elizabeth Arnett:

I thank the Deputy for the question. She touched on a pertinent point in that the withdrawal impacts all our colleagues to a greater or lesser extent. As Ms Howard has said, we will have colleagues who will have TUPE rights and who will move to another institution and continue to do the work they are doing now, but that does not apply to the majority of our colleagues. From the outset, or once we announced the withdrawal in February, we focused significantly on engaging with all our colleagues to prepare for the changes that are coming for individuals and their careers.

We put a big focus on learning and development. We have almost 700 colleagues doing professional qualifications this year. We have invested in that and have opened up another window in relation to the professional qualifications. We are also providing a lot of practical support to get colleagues ready to think about where they want to be in their careers in terms of career coaching, LinkedIn profiles and the practical supports needed to start thinking about where to go next and how to get there. That is a programme that is ongoing in the sense that, now that we have concluded the discussions with the Financial Services Union, we have an additional training grant for colleagues as they depart the bank. On the day they leave, they are given a €5,000 grant for additional and further training beyond their career with Ulster Bank.

As Ms Howard said, we have not opened and are not opening a redundancy scheme this year. We made a very clear commitment in respect of that back in February. We have gone further than that to say we will not be opening a voluntary redundancy scheme in the first half of next year. Our intention is to give colleagues as much notice and support as we can, but there is quite a body of work to be done. We call out the enormous commitment our colleagues have shown to the work that has to be done, both through Covid and the withdrawal, particularly our colleagues who work in our branches and online. We are very conscious of the issue. It is a good issue to raise. We will keep the committee updated as to the progress we make.