Mr. Conor O'Kelly:

Our role is to ensure that we can access markets and finance the country's borrowing requirement as efficiently as possible. That is the mandate that has been given to us so when we carry out our risk analysis - between 60 and 70 people in the NTMA spend all of their time doing this - we are trying to work out access to markets, the price of that access and how we can best optimise our ability to raise money in the marketplace at the lowest possible interest rate.