Mr. William Molloy:

In terms of negative interest, every effort is made to avoid negative interest but, as the Deputy will be aware, until recently the market environment was negative interest rates that were out to quite long maturities. If one had cash and wanted to place it anywhere, until recently it was at a negative interest rate. What we try to do is minimise the amount that we hold in cash to try to repay the Exchequer loan, which has an interest rate attached to it as quickly as possible, but at the same time limit the risk that we have paid too much of it back and then we have to go back to the Department and ask for a top-up again. In terms of what we have been doing, we have effectively been placing the funds at zero, so we have avoided quite a lot of potential negative interest rates, given the numbers involved. With any kind of cash balance that is held on the Central Bank account, the negative interest on that would effectively form part of the profits of the Central Bank.