Ms Catherine Moroney:

I am not aware of any rate of 15%. One thing I will say to the Senator about those overdraft facilities, and I would like to say this about Europe as this is really important from a European and an Irish perspective, is that in Ireland - we are part of this as well, so I am not saying this only concerns SMEs - we have a huge appetite for the use of overdraft facilities, much more so than the rest of Europe. It is very flexible, it is understandable, it is there and one does not pay for it when one does not use it, even though we have to keep the capital so we must assume it will be used at some stage. However, one only pays for it when one uses it. The committee displayed a chart earlier that showed the use of trade credit in European and other countries. They have a much stronger propensity to use revolver-type and trade-type facilities. We have a farm credit facility to help with stocking and IPF facilities. I quoted an average blended rate of 4.75% earlier. Some of those rates are competitively sensitive and to the benefit of the customer. They are all below that average blended rate. We are trying to encourage our customers to use those working capital facilities to manage both the cost and their cashflow and to be less reliant on the overdraft. The overdraft is an option that is there if they need to use it.

It would not be the best advice to tell someone to use his or her personal account instead of his or her business account. That just would not be good advice, but I think-----