Mr. Frank O'Connor:

I will be as brief as I can. The next slide shows the breakdown of our investor base. It shows the last eight syndicate transactions where we launched a benchmark bond of a particularly large size, that is, transactions that were bigger than an auction, going back to 2013. It illustrates the point made by Mr. O'Kelly about how dependent we are on overseas investors. If members look at the right hand side of the graph, in terms of geography, about 87%, on average, of participants in the syndicate transactions were overseas investors. On the left hand side of the graph we have tried to provide a breakdown of the types of investor involved. The good news for us in that context is the evidence of the quite diverse real money accounts back in the market. Members will have noted in some of our press releases the size of the order book and the fact that the number of orders was over 200. In that sense, we were not reliant on ten or 11 large clients. Members should note that the term "central banks" does not refer to ECB quantitative easing but to other central banks buying our debt. We are talking about what I would call a much healthier, real money account base of long-term debt holders like pension funds and central banks. The graph gives a description of what the situation has been like in the past few years.

Beyond that is the maturity profile. I will not delay on it, but I will make a point about the various colours used. Pre-crisis, there was just one colour of Irish Government bonds. Obviously, it excluded our retail debt. As there is now official sector debt, there is a multitude of colours. The task for us over time is to find a home among traditional investors for that official sector debt, which entails EU money, the last remnants of the IMF money, bilateral loans, etc. It could be up to a magnitude of €70 billion. We have bought ourselves time, which is good news, but we must be mindful of this.

I will not stop on the next slide. It is included for members' convenience and shows the actual numbers per category as opposed to graphically.

I will conclude on the last slide. It repeats the maturity profile on the left-hand table and the average life of debt portfolios in Europe on the right-hand side. Look at the clear white bars which show large redemptions. That is what we have been doing in recent years. It is debt we have already repaid to reduce our funding profile. The red is where we have been lengthening the portfolio. The significant reductions in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 primarily relate to IMF repayments. When we repaid the IMF early, the debt only had, on average, four years of life left. As Mr. Kelly mentioned, we funded to 17 or 18 years, on average, through a 30-year bond. We took that opportunity, not only to save interest, but also to go further out the yield curve to improve the profile. In addition, in recent years we have been buying back some short-dated bonds on a bilateral basis. We have probably bought back €2.5 billion worth of bonds in that regard and switched them to longer maturities. We have made progress. The figure a couple of years ago was €70 billion in redemptions, but now it is down to approximately €52 billion.

The right-hand side of the slide shows that the average life of Ireland's debt portfolio is one of the longest among our European peers. This is on foot of the negotiated extensions in Europe, plus what we have been doing in the market in recent years. It has left us in a healthier space such that we are not a hostage to refinancing risk in any one year, notwithstanding the fact that a couple of large maturities are approaching.