Dr. Colin Hunt:

Over the course of the past ten years, the fact that we had such low reliance on fees and commissions and such high reliance on net interest income was one of the drivers of the weakness of the Irish banks on a relative basis, compared with other European banks. It is the case that because of the structure of business and the heavy reliance on interest, as distinct from fees and commissions - other banks have far higher fees and commissions than we do - we are more sensitive than other banks to increases in official interest rates once they are passed through.