Mr. John McKeon:

Most of the bank charges relate to payments. We have to pay the bank when payments go through and they are driven by demand. As the volume of payments such as jobseeker's allowance reduces, so does the amount of money we pay in bank charges. I will explain how we manage our money and why there would be negative interest. We are funded by the central Vote from the central account. We draw the money down from that, put it into our own bank account, and then send any surplus back. Unfortunately, there were negative interest rates during the year but we cannot operate on the basis that there is no money in our account. There has to be money in our account in order to meet sums that are due. There are negative interest rates, which is unfortunately the reality. To give the Deputy some comfort, in terms of Social Insurance Fund receipts and the surplus there, we give those to the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA. We do not hold them in the bank for a moment longer than they need to be held because we do not want to incur negative interest on them.