Dr. Mark Cassidy:

It is a very interesting issue. I would say that we see little risk from these. Certainly, there are few direct links. The channels that we see are, first, energy imports and second, a global overall economic slowdown to which we would be exposed. They are, very clearly, for us the two main effects.

On the possibility of default by the Russian banks, I rely little bit more the European Central Bank analysis for this because they have a greater insight into the European banking system. The Irish retail banks, the ones that matter for the stability of our financial system, have negligible exposures to Russia, Ukraine, or anything affected by that. In Europe there are some banks that are more exposed than others. There are some individual banks that could find the situation problematic because of their exposures but in terms of the overall banking system, they are not a significant enough part to cause concern for the financial stability overall. I would say the same for Ireland.

The London property market is an interesting example. I would say that there are localised sectoral concerns like that. In terms of the impact on Ireland, or those issues affecting the economy, those risks would be lower than the ones that I mentioned earlier. The financial links with Russia through special purpose vehicles do not have direct implications because there is no interlinkage with the domestic Irish economy.