Ms Jane Howard:

We do not have customers whose accounts we have sold to other banks. As for what we are doing now, assuming the transaction is approved by the competition authority to PTSB, we made a deliberate decision that we would try to get customers who are in financial difficulty onto a reperforming basis in order that they could go to PTSB with their account deemed to relate to a reperforming loan, and that has been very successful. In two of three cases, we have been able to work with them, which is broadly in line with what we were seeing even before Covid and throughout Covid. We have been able to get them onto a reperforming basis and we have found those customers have been able to stay on that. They will go to PTSB, subject to competition approval of the transaction, as part of that loan sale.

We are in exclusive talks with AIB in regard to the other side of the mortgage business, but we are looking to put exactly the same in place. We will put customers' accounts onto a reperforming basis and they will travel to AIB, subject to that being binding or to getting competition authority approval. This is so important because it means we will get as many customers as possible onto a reperforming status, and we will then have to deal with customers whose accounts are not performing. Ultimately, we will have to make a non-performing loan sale, but we did not want to do that until we had given everybody the chance to reach reperforming status-----