Mr. Richie Boucher:

I must be clear. I set tough targets for Mr. McLoughlin and I am required to meet the tough targets set by the bank's investors. We have objectives, which we have to set out and achieve. A key objective for the bank is growing its balance sheet.

On Senator Quinn's question, confidence is the biggest concern. Bank of Ireland needs to lend money. It is not a question of the bank "wanting" to lend money, it "needs" to lend money. If people approach the bank it will work hard with them. While we will need the courage to say "Yes" we will also need to be able to say "No". We want to do business. What is important is that customers believe in their businesses and do not take "No" for an answer. They must prepare as well as they can and this means not focusing solely on numbers. I accept we will need to assist people in the forecasting of cash flows, but convincing the bank that a particular business will be successful is the job of the applicant. To do this the applicant needs to focus not only on how he or she proposes to ensure the business will be successful but on potential bumps in the road and how he or she proposes to mitigate that risk, all of which is important from the point of view of the bank. It is important an applicant can show that he or she has thought about what problems might arise for the business. It is important customers are able to look at the downside risk because that is what the bank has to do. The bank's margin is a fixed one and it does not participate in the upside. As such, if customers have considered any possible downside and how they propose to mitigate it the process will be much easier. The bank needs to continue to work hard to let people know all of this. I am delighted to hear that customers approaching Bank of Ireland, although worried, are happy with its approval rates. Our success comes from that.

With regard to Deputy Wallace's question in relation to the ECB and EIB, Bank of Ireland is required to repay the ECB as quickly as possible. Current borrowing by the bank from the ECB is invested in Irish Government bonds or in support of NAMA bonds. The money we borrowed from the wholesale markets was for funding loan assets. As customer deposits increase we are required to repay the ECB. I hope I have answered the Deputy's question. On the issue of big business versus small business, we try to address this issue using separate teams. We have teams of people who deal with the corporate bank and other teams who deal with what we call the mid-segment, which is customers who have a borrowing requirement of €300,000 to €10 million and a further team trained and experienced in dealing with smaller credits. For example, a person seeking a small loan for a plumbing shop would be dealt with by one team and the large corporation would be dealt with by another one. We segment applications in this way to ensure we can put in place objectives and goals for staff in terms of chasing business.