Ms Margaret Hayes:

The bank has a new chief executive and management team in place. Mr. Jeremy Masding became chief executive officer in February and, since he took up office, his main priority from the board is to work out a strategy for dealing with our arrears issues. Using the MARS, the mortgage arrears resolution strategy, process which was developed for the whole banking sector by the Central Bank, we are developing several processes in the bank to improve management information, frequency of management, segmentation of the loan book as well as the whole menu of treatments which have come out of the MARS which in our case will number 14.

Since February, we have ratcheted up the degree of reportage. Accordingly, at this point we are getting quite detailed reports at board level every single month not just a progress on the flow of arrears, but on what is happening to stop arrears. We are now beginning to roll out individual treatments across the full back and front loan books.