Mr. Ken Burke:

I will respond to Senator Lombard's points. I am conscious that the Senator did not have the benefit of hearing some of the discussion earlier. He spoke about some of the statistics he had regarding the term of the fund. From AIB's perspective, only 5% of our funds are drawn in less than one year so far. The converse of that is that 72% of the funds drawn have been for four years or more. Certainly, we have not been trying to encourage farmers into shorter term facilities. I have our brochure-ware with us today. Our brochure-ware is very clear and explicit that no security will be required for these loans, so there was no question of additional security being sought or indeed constructs where we deliberately sought reductions or early repayment of other facilities. I can be clear from that perspective.

In terms of our broader relationship with SBCI, we were happy to have the €60 million cashflow support fund as part of our suite. We have €400 million of other SBCI funding out to SMEs and 27% of that funding has been going to the agri sector. We have a very strong relationship with SBCI and we are looking at how we can be as innovative as possible to give farmers easy access to credit and the lowest form in cost of credit. We are very happy to work with SBCI on a go-forward basis to see how we can be innovative and creative for the sector.

My colleague, Anne Finnegan, will respond to the Chairman's question.