Dr. Anne Finnegan:

With regard to the demand we are seeing, the reference to Glanbia's products and playing catch-up in the market, the context in the farm banking market is that the overall lending to the agri sector peaked in the first quarter of 2009, on the back of the scheme of investment aid for farm waste management, at €5.2 billion. At this point, we are 42% down on that level of debt in the sector. That is the overall context in which all farmers are operating. They have paid down debt substantially. They took on debt at a period of time to deal with a specific compliance issue and they have paid down debt since then. Since April 2014, we have brought forward two €500 million funds ring-fenced for the agri sector. The second of those is almost 90% complete at this stage. I am confident that we have come forward and made the funds available to the sector, and that there has been an appetite and an uptake from the sector.

In terms of dealing with the cyclical issues in the sector, before the difficulties and the volatility we have seen in the dairy sector in the past six or seven years and further back with the cyclicality we would have traditionally seen in the pig sector, it has always been AIB's position to work with the sector on an annual basis to deal with the cyclical problems that might exist. It is difficult to find one solution that fits all problems and all farmers' difficulties when there is a trough period. We all need a suite of solutions in our armoury to deal with the nature of those problems in a particular year.

This was a very effective solution from AIB's perspective and we were delighted to have it available to us in quarter 1 of this year, but there are other things we need to do to work with our customers, and not all problems will have been solved with this scheme, nor could they have been solved.

Regarding the pig and tillage sectors, I am confident that our pig and tillage customers came forward to avail of this scheme. In terms of the pig sector, notwithstanding the difficult margin year that the sector experienced in 2016, we did not see any particular signs of stress in our pig book last year. We saw quite a bit of investment in the sector last year. That has been an ongoing phenomenon from AIB's perspective. We bank a group of very resilient pig customers so when the sector is in a trough, they have a capacity to maintain their position. That is a testament to the efficiency and financial astuteness in management of the operators in that sector.

This scheme has done what it can do for the tillage sector, certainly in respect of some of the built-up problems that existed from 2016. We recognise the challenges that exist in the sector. That has not dimmed our view of it. It is a critically important sector for Irish agriculture and it is critically important for our livestock sectors. AIB recognises that the challenge for us on an ongoing basis is to work with our tillage farming customers and look at how they manage their exposure to the grain markets on an annual basis, and how they ring-fence their own position, particularly those people who have large conacre bills on an annual basis.