Dr. Colin Hunt:

With regard to AIB, the sustainability agenda is core to our mission. This is the biggest challenge facing the world at the moment. However, it is also the biggest opportunity for banking, ironically. We approach it in three ways. We look at it as a business in our own right. We have made a commitment to be carbon neutral in our own operations by 2030. We are making very solid progress towards meeting that target. We are very excited about the imminent electrisation of our two solar plants in County Wexford. Who would have thought that the bulk of the AIB estate was going to be powered by solar plants in County Wexford? That is an emerging reality.

We have also made a commitment that 70% of all our new lending would be green or transitional in nature by 2030. We have changed our third-party supplier code to encourage suppliers to come on the same low-carbon transition that we have embarked on ourselves. We have an array of products in this area. We have a €10 billion climate action fund, which will be fully deployed at the end of this year. We have personal loans, car loans and mortgages which are designed to assist our customers - business and personal - as they move along their transition to a lower carbon future.

We regard ourselves as a thought leader and action leader in this space. Do not take my word for it, however. There are any number of international independent rating agencies that see AIB in the leadership cohort as we rush to try to preserve the precious planet on which we all live.

With regard to keeping the bank safe, the banking system in this country is at a point diametrically opposite to where it was 15 or 16 years ago. In our case, our core equity tier 1 capital was 15.3% in 2007. It is currently 15.7%, so three times more capital in real terms. In risk adjusted terms, however, it is probably a substantially greater amount in cash terms than we had available to us at that point in time. If we go back to 2007, our loan-to-deposit ratio was 144%. We were reliant on wholesale funding for approximately one third of all the lending activity in which we engaged. Today, that figure is in the low 60s. Thankfully, after many years of hard work, we find ourselves at a point where the Irish banking system, and AIB as a key player in that system, is in the strongest position it has probably ever been in. That is the best way we can withstand the sort of incidents we saw in the United States earlier this year and also in Switzerland.

We are very committed to new building. It is good for us in terms of our business relationships but it is also in terms of our personal customer relationships because it is about providing potential mortgage borrowers with the homes for which they are all crying out.

With regard to credit facilities from Ulster Bank, we obviously bought a portfolio of in excess of €3 billion - I think it was €3.3 billion - of corporate and commercial loans from Ulster Bank. There have been no issues in relation to the continuity of credit facilities as a consequence of ownership there changing to AIB.