Mr. Shane O'Sullivan:

We were very keen at the outset of tackling the arrears problem to understand things from the BTL perspective. We felt that working through the problems and restructuring accounts would be the most effective solution. As we did with the home loan book, we set about meeting each of our BTL customers and assessed the situation on the basis of affordability and sustainability. Once we could find a path that gave us confidence that capital could be repaid at the end of the term or an extended term and there was affordability between here and there, we were happy to restructure the account. Our large scale restructuring approach is different from that of most banks. It has worked to date. Our performance on the buy-to-let is arguably better than on home loan although the numbers are smaller. That is substantiated by the reduction from 5,000 to 2,000. Most of those restructures are working. Approximately 92% of them have remained performing. Time has been good to landlords and owners of buy-to-let property in terms of price appreciation and rental income. That causes other difficulties in society but through the narrow lens of buy-to-let landlords, it puts them in a position to repay their mortgages now in a way that they were not previously.