Dr. Colin Hunt:

I will answer very quickly in relation to the issues the Deputy has raised and I will ask Mr. Jim O'Keeffe to come in on the partnership with An Post.

The commitment is real, it is hard, it is off the agenda and is not coming back on the agenda. This is not a proposal that will be revisited in my time.

Second, in respect of the bailout, the State continues to have a 63.5% shareholding in the institution. We are very much focused on repaying the amount of money the State put into us. We have paid over €11 billion in cash terms at this stage and that remains a key focus for myself and my colleagues, both the executive committee and on the board. Our relationship with the Government in terms of communication about such matters is governed by a relationship framework that was put in place at the time of the bailout at the request of the European Commission, I think. We complied in full with our obligations under that relationship framework.

On the partnership with An Post, this is not something new or something that has been cooked up in the past few months. This is something that has been going on at AIB for over 20 years. It has been a very successful partnership and what were doing in this most recent iteration, was further broadening the services customers could get in post offices under a service we called AIB at An Post. It was about significantly increasing the number of things people could do with their AIB account in a post office.