Mr. Richie Boucher:

The agriculture sector is an important sector for us and we recognised that we had to enhance our skills base and have people who understand the dynamics because sometimes what one sees in black and white on a loan application is straightforward profit and loss and that is not necessarily a judgment as to whether he or she is a good farmer. We are a universal bank with 250 branches. There is no sector where we say we have no appetite for it because in our view good business people can make money and develop their businesses even in challenged sectors and less good business people can lose money in such sectors. We see areas of particular opportunity. For example, my colleague, Mr. McLoughin, mentioned infrastructure where we have applied skills that we developed in our international business. We have brought them back to Ireland. Public private partnerships are highly complex and it is a specialised area of lending. We have a particular expertise which we learned overseas and we are using that. Sometimes, one can become too specialist in an area and there is a danger that people become too specialist because many business people are generalists anyway but there are certain sectors such as hotels, nursing homes, motor dealerships and the pharmacy sector, which have their own dynamics and, therefore, we have specialist teams who help the underwriter by outlining the dynamic and saying, for example, we looked at the sector a year ago and it was challenged but things are improving. Our appetite will be judged on that. We will not get all the decisions right but we have to try to grow our business.

With regard to independent surveys and so on, the only proof of the pudding is we have 250 branches and they have to generate business. If those branches do not, then we have to look at our cost base differently but we want to give them an opportunity.