Ms Elizabeth Arnett:

At the start of January, there were approximately 10,000 accounts. That figure has dropped by 4,500 in the past four and a half weeks, which is welcome. Of the remaining 5,500 accounts, approximately half are in receipt of child benefit. Child benefit is not means-tested, so it does not indicate that there is vulnerability there necessarily, but we are going to make the assumption that there is. The remaining accounts are spread out over a series of different payment schemes, such as living supplements, pensions and so on. Right now, the Department of Social Protection is targeting customers where the numbers are higher. They are using social media and advertising campaigns, as well as the direct communications they have used previously. We are doing the same. We are contacting customers as they come into the branch, making it clear and simple so that customers know exactly what to do. They do not have to have the public services card to give the Department of Social Protection their new account details. It can be done simply over the phone or in writing. We are making sure that customers are aware that it is a simple process and that they do not have to have gone go through the rigours of getting the social identification card. That is definitely resulting in some customers changing. Approximately 800 have changed accounts in the past week. We are also contacting customers who are coming up to the end of their notice period and reminding them that if they have a Department of Social Protection payment going into the account, they need to get in touch with us. For the next couple of weeks we are going to allow all of that activity to play out. We expect and hope that we will get the same rate of change of up to 800 or 900 customers changing every week. We are then going to get down to small numbers of customers who are potentially vulnerable. We are going to cross-reference those with our vulnerable customer team. We have individuals assigned, across the bank, who, for want of a better word, own each individual vulnerable customer. We are confident that the resources are in place to hand-hold those customers out of the bank and into another service provider, and that the majority of them will be moved by the end of March.