Mr. Robert Mulhall:

The Senator raises a very valid point. As Mr. Byrne mentioned, we opened three outlets. They are fully self-service types of devices but we have a full staff complement to assist customers, and in that regard we get very positive feedback from customers. In all other locations, as Mr. Byrne mentioned, we have kept what may be called "optionality". With the technology on offer around self-service devices and enabling cash transactions over self-service, it must be noted that this process also offers large availability. We have 20 lobbies operating across the country from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., with full service availability of transactions. There are two sides to the discussion and the reality is we do approximately 1.6 million transactions per day, with less than 10% of those manually conducted. This is a movement of society as much as anything else. As Mr. Byrne said, we are very keen to keep the optionality open and we ensure to provide service on that basis.

If I may, I will mention our arrangement with An Post, where we offer transaction services in over 1,100 An Post outlets across the country. In 2016 that accounted for 4.3 million transactions alone. From that perspective we believe we are offering a high level of availability of service transactions to our customers.