Mr. Tom Considine:

It is necessary in all of this to start at the beginning and to ask why we are deleveraging. We are deleveraging because we want to reduce the risk to the taxpayer. This goes back to the PCAR exercise conducted by the Central Bank of Ireland, which led to the recent recapitalisation of the Bank of Ireland. Assessments were made at that time as to what type of discount to book value would be needed to do this. As a board, that is our main concern. The actual discount was less than what had been allowed for in the PCAR exercise. Therefore, the deleveraging exercise was capital positive.

One of my responsibilities as a board member is to ensure that the processes used to sell or buy and so on stand up to scrutiny. In my experience, since taking up my position on the board, those processes are very thorough. I have no knowledge of anything that would suggest that anybody was acting other than in the best interests of Bank of Ireland.