Morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Colin Hunt, CEO of AIB, and on behalf of all my colleagues across the group, I want to welcome you to the presentation of our interim results for 2021. I will be updating you on the strategic progress we have made in the first six months of this year and on our plans for the years ahead. Then Donal Galvin, our CFO, will bring you through the financial details of the performance in the first half. In December of last year, we presented our plan to transform AIB Group, and we also presented our updated financial targets out to the end of 2023. Today, I am pleased to report that the execution of that transformation plan is proceeding at pace as we prepare AIB for a post-COVID reality. The group is already benefiting from an improving economic outlook. The outlook is brightening as the vaccination program rolls out at pace. As the Irish banking landscape is reshaped, our strong customer franchise, our national physical presence, and our attractive digital offering position us very well for the periods ahead. At the same time, the robustness of the group is underpinned by a very strong capital position, with our CET1 ratio standing at 16.4% at the end of June. We are now well embarked on our strategy, which is being implemented at pace. I'll update you in some detail in a few moments on that. We're also reporting good cost discipline across the group, with total cost down by 1%, notwithstanding a rising depreciation headwind, and we've reduced our total head count by 3% to just over 9,000 FTEs. We've also made good progress on the various inorganic initiatives which we have already announced to the market. With the Goodbody acquisition, the Great-West Lifeco JV, and the purchase of the Ulster Bank corporate and commercial loan book, adding to our product and services range, our lending base, and our customer numbers. We continue to make great progress on the imperative of sustainability with our energy and climate action area, once again, demonstrating the strongest growth rate across our lending book. Turning now to the economic backdrop, the outlook for growth has improved materially since the start of the year, with the Central Bank expecting the economy to expand by more than 8% this year and by more than 5% in calendar 2022. Improving business sentiment has also been reflected in various PMIs, with those indices now well into expansionary territory for both manufacturing and services. Yesterday, we announced in relation to our own manufacturing index that the new orders component had reached a record high for the third consecutive month. Earlier this morning, we announced that the services PMI, the AIB services PMI, reached a high we haven't seen in two decades. After a lost opening quarter, we've also seen a very strong recovery in terms of output within the construction sector. A very strong performance in terms of commencements in April and May allow us now to forecast with confidence that we will have 27,000 commencements this year, the best outturn since 2008. Meanwhile, household balance sheets remain in rigorous good health, with debt to disposable income levels roughly half of their post-GFC peak, and of course, household deposits continuing to build something that is reflected in the shape of our own balance sheet. Our confidence in the outlook is very much bolstered by the success of the national vaccination program. 72% of Irish adults are now fully vaccinated. 86.5% of Irish adults have now had at least one jab. To borrow a phrase from the CEO of our Health Service Executive, Paul Reid, the pace of vaccine rollout has given us a glide path to some level of normality where we can rebuild society and our economy. We are seeing an improvement in the labor market as the economy reopens. I understand now, it was announced yesterday, that the number of people receiving the Pandemic Unemployment Payment is at the lowest level since that was introduced at the start of the crisis. That underlying improvement in economic activity has already been reflected in terms of our own data, in terms of card spend, and also we're seeing some promising developments in our mortgage applications pipeline. With the COVID emergency beginning to ease, thanks to a successful vaccination program, AIB Group is strongly positioned on foot of our leading personal and business customer franchises. The quality and growing popularity of our digital technology, with more and more of our customers now active on those platforms, and mobile interactions pushing above 2 million per day on occasions during the first half of this year. At the same time, while we have commenced a process which will see 21 of our branches being amalgamated in the Republic of Ireland in this calendar year, we will retain the largest distribution network across the country, and we remain committed to having a strong physical presence in the communities that we serve. Combining that leading customer franchise and the quality and ever-increasing functionality of our digital offering, we are well set now to benefit from the impact of the various strategic initiatives that we are heavily engaged in as we seek to improve the quality and range of our products and our services. Turning now to the details of the implementation of our Strategy 2023, which we announced in December of last year. We're pleased to report very good progress. Our plan to take out EUR 230 million in cost is well on track as we transform AIB's operational efficiency and build an ever more sustainable business model. On our branch network, we've already amalgamated six branches this year. We've announced our intention to amalgamate a further 15 branches as we move towards year-end. At the same time, we are in ongoing constructive dialogue with An Post, with a view to deepening that important 20-year relationship. On our end-to-end credit project, we are making good progress on the centralization, simplification, and automation of our credit management processes. We've already seen a reduction of 25 FTEs in this area in the first half on foot of that initiative. On completion, we expect this project will deliver something of the order of EUR 35 million in savings on an annual basis by end 2023. We're also well advanced on our plans to reshape our working environment. With a new hybrid working model being rolled out from September, with staff working between two and three days per week from the office. We physically exited one of our Dublin office buildings. We expect to commercially exit that building ahead of year-end. On our insourcing project, we have filled over 100 digital data and change management roles. That's a competitive sector of the labor market. We are very much committed to pushing ahead with this initiative, and we are targeting annual cost savings of EUR 35 million here by 2023. In Britain, we previously announced our intention to exit our SME business. We presented our strategic refresh back in December. We've now moved beyond phase 1 bids there. We're entering a binding bids phase with a number of interested parties. In Northern Ireland, our moves to improve the operational efficiency of that business will see us closing eight branches in that market. We've launched a voluntary severance program on foot of these changes. Finally, we continue to make progress on reducing our NPE legacy. We've had two portfolio sales in the first half of the year. Our NPE as a proportion of gross loans, 6.5% at the end of the half, very much remain on track, very much remain committed to that 3% target for the end of 2023. In December, we outlined our plan to reduce our cost base to less than EUR 1.35 billion on an unchanged business basis. Leaving aside the impact of the inorganic initiatives on our costs, we're continuing to target that level. We are making good, steady progress across the various work streams, as I have already highlighted. On the M&A front, we've concluded a commercial agreement with NatWest Group on the acquisition of EUR 4.2 billion in performing corporate and commercial loans from Ulster Bank. That acquisition is now going through regulatory and competition authority clearance, and we expect to see those assets coming onto the group balance sheet through 2022. On Goodbody, we are awaiting final regulatory clearance. We've received clearance from the competition authority, and we're looking forward to welcoming its customers, its staff, and their capabilities, products, and services into AIB Group. We expect that transaction to complete ahead of year-end, and we're very excited about what our businesses will achieve together over the years ahead. That positions us very, very strongly to address comprehensively all the needs of our growing customer base. Finally, we have concluded an agreement with Great-West Lifeco to establish a joint venture to significantly enhance our product offering in life, pensions, savings, and investment products. We're going through a regulatory approval process there as well, and we expect to launch those products and that joint venture to market in the second half of next year. Sustainable communities is and remains one of the key strategic pillars of AIB Group. It is central to everything that we do. We continue to make great progress on the E in ESG. We've already made net zero commitments in relation to our own operations and to the future shape of our lending book. We issued EUR 750 million in green bonds in May of this year. We've enhanced the attractiveness of our green product range, our green lending product range, including the launch of a green mortgage offering through Haven, our broker channel. Our energy climate action and social team continues to report the highest growth rate in terms of new lending across the group, with 40% growth in the first half of this year on a year-on-year basis. We're also making good progress on the ESG. Today, we have launched a social bond framework which complements our existing green bond framework. We're committed to supporting the building of new homes, including more than 1,200 social housing homes. We continue to invest in the communities that we serve through AIB Together partnerships. We remain a key partner of many initiatives, including FoodCloud, which is dedicated to reducing food waste across the country. G, governance, is the most important single component of the ESG agenda. Everything else flows from this. It's a key area of focus for our board. We have a dedicated sustainability subcommittee of the board, which supervises our work in this vital area. In addition, we have made a number of important external public commitments, including as a signatory of the UN Global Compact, and we have recently launched our Sustainable Lending Framework to guide our activity here. Today, we are reporting on a six-month period in which we executed our plan at pace and with determination. For the second half, as an organization, we are focused on the continued implementation of that transformation plan to drive EUR 230 million in costs out of our business. We are focused on the completion and integration of the various inorganic initiatives already announced. We will continue to advance our contribution to the sustainability and support all our customers in their transition to a greener, lower carbon future. We will deliver sustainable profits, and in so doing, create real shareholder value and the capacity for future distributions. As I conclude my remarks before handing over to Donal, the clarity of our plan, our progress on its execution, and an improving economic outlook allow us today to announce revised medium-term targets. Firstly, cost target of less than EUR 1.475 billion, which is our previous target of less than EUR 1.35 billion, plus the impact in full of the Goodbody Ulster Bank and life JV transactions. Secondly, an appropriate capital target for our business for CET1 of greater than 13.5%, and a new return on tangible equity target of greater than 9%. These are our new targets to 2023. This is how our progress will be measured, and we are united in our determination to deliver upon them in the interests of all our stakeholders. We have a very clear plan. We are demonstrating our ability to execute with every passing week, and we are ambitious and optimistic for the future of our business. Donal? Okay, thank you very much, Colin. Good morning, everybody. I'd like to bring you through the financial performance for the first half of 2021, which we feel is a good set of results in line with expectations, and we're optimistic for the second half of 2021. AIB had an operating profit of EUR 373 million, which is very much in line with the first half of 2020. This equated to a profit after tax of EUR 274 million, which includes an ECL write-back of EUR 103 million. We had total income of EUR 1.183 million, and that's made up of net interest income of EUR 881 million, which is down 9%, and other income of EUR 302 million, which is up 37%. Our costs were EUR 739 million for the first half of the year, down 1%, well managed and in line with expectations. Our FTEs reduced 3% versus June 2020 to 9,003 at the end of June 2021. Performing loans of EUR 54.9 billion are broadly stable, and that's including new lending of EUR 4.5 billion, which is up 3% versus the first half of 2020. Our non-performing exposures were EUR 3.8 billion or 6.5% of gross loans, which decreased by 12.5% in the 6 months. That includes a series of portfolio sales executed in Q1 of around EUR 600 million. Our strong funding position has been compounded by excess liquidity. Customer deposits of EUR 88.3 billion increased by 8%, and we drew down a further EUR 6 billion of TLTRO at the end of June 2021 to contribute to higher cash balances held at the Central Bank of Ireland of EUR 32 billion. Our MREL target is now exceeded after the issuance of EUR 750 million of a green bond in Q2. Our capital fully loaded ratio is 16.4%, and on a transitional basis, it's 19.3%, comfortably ahead of all regulatory requirements. On the income statement, I'm not going to go through all of this line by line because I'm going to break out some of the key items later. For us, obviously, the profit after tax is a key metric of EUR 274 million. I would just draw your attention to the bank levies and regulatory fees, which were EUR 71 million for the first half of the year. Obviously, these are at more elevated levels given the amount of liabilities that have been generated on our balance sheet and Deposit Guarantee Scheme fees, which are associated with that. We think that line for the rest of the year will be around EUR 125 million. Indeed, on a go-forward basis, I would suggest that you use that as the base costs. Net interest income is down 9%, which has improved from the first quarter of the year, when it was down 13%. A number of moving parts here as ever. My focus is really around net interest income, and I'll talk through the moving parts now. We obviously had a benefit on the liability side of EUR 65 million. EUR 33 million of that is coming from customer accounts on a negative deposit pricing strategy. EUR 15 million of that is the benefit of the TLTRO, which we drew down in 2020, and booked the benefit in 2021. EUR 12 million is related to wholesale securities or wholesale debt, which has been refinanced at lower levels. On the flip side, EUR -82 million was related to lower customer loans income, and that is more, I would say, a loan volume issue than a margin or a rate issue. EUR 41 million is related to investment securities income. Obviously, as higher-yielding assets mature and we reinvest at lower levels, there is a reduction. Lastly, you can see the impact here of those balances building up at the Central Bank of Ireland, where we had a cost of EUR 28 million for the first half of the year, for excess liquidity placed with the Central Bank at lower interest rates. For the second half of the year, our expectation is that the investment securities drag will dissipate. Customer loans drag will dissipate somewhat as our loan volumes increase. Our cost of liabilities and the improvements that we're making there will continue to improve. At the end of the year 2020, we had around EUR 4 billion on negative rates. At the half year, we had EUR 9 billion or EUR 10 billion, which attracted negative rates. Our policy at the time was to charge balances greater than EUR 3 million, and the EUR 10 billion quantum is related to that. As we go through the second half of the year, we will reduce the threshold of negative rates down to EUR 1 million for all customers, and that will bring an additional EUR 5 billion of customers into scope for negative deposit pricing. As I mentioned previously, we have maximized our TLTRO drawdown capacity from EUR 4 billion up to EUR 10 billion. The reason for that is we are increasingly confident, needless to say, of reaching all of the new lending criteria. That will have a benefit that will straddle between 2021 and 2022, obviously at the discounted rate. For net interest income for the year, we would be comfortable to reiterate our guidance of down 5% year-on-year. Other income, EUR 302 million, which is up 37%. I think within this, the key component is the fees and commission line, which is up 10%, very much showing as the economy reopens, as individuals, businesses learn to live with COVID, reopen, we are obviously seeing that return on the fees and commissions line. We're very happy with that outturn of EUR 212 million. In the other items or business income lines, we had a strong first half of the year. Within this, we had some revaluation gains on our core Visa share position, which was around EUR 20 million-EUR 25 million. We have a strategy to invest in various domestically focused venture capital PE funds, and returns were very strong in the first half of the year from those funds. As we go into the second half of the year, I think we wouldn't consider those equity gains to be something that you should consider to be perpetual. On the fees and commissions line, we do think that there's good momentum there, and we should expect to see a similar performance for the end of the year. Overall, for other income, I would say that our guidance there will be EUR 500 million, and we're happy with that. There might be a couple of percent upside to that. Indeed, when the Goodbody transaction closes, which is likely to be somewhere late Q3, early Q4, there will be a benefit coming into the fees and commissions line, which will obviously be in addition to the numbers I discussed. Costs down 1%, very much in line with expectations. Factors that are impacting this, you can see the movement in our headcount from 9,300 down to 9,000. With all of the initiatives that Colin would have outlined earlier, we would expect to see a continued downward trajectory on that staff cost line. Exceptional items are EUR 191 million, made up of a few items. Legacy restitution costs of EUR 124 million, EUR 25 million of that would relate to our legacy tracker mortgage items, and EUR 100 million of that relates to a provision that the bank made at the first half of the year. This is to cover a legacy investment fund item, which was sold by the bank between 2002 to 2006, to our high net worth customer base. On the back of legal proceedings, we have decided to take a provision to manage this customer group in their entirety. I would say it's a very tightly defined group of 2,500 customers. The total quantum invested in these funds was 215 million GBP. We're being conservative to take a provision at the half year, and we will have to look to conclude this before the end of the year. Additional items relate to our strategy implementation program of EUR 44 million. We had exceptional costs related to the inorganic items of EUR 16 million, and we had a small loss of EUR 12 million on our portfolio sale disposals. When I look at costs for the year, I think we'll be very much in line with the consensus on our own guidance of EUR 1.5 billion. Again, there will be an impact to that if and when or when the Goodbody's business is brought onto our balance sheet in Q4. I think for exceptional costs, what I would say is for 2021, they will be approximately EUR 350 million. For 2022, they'll be approximately EUR 200 million, as all of those restitution costs disappear. For 2023, we expect all of these exceptional costs to be de minimis as the restitution items are in the past and all of our cost takeout programs are concluded. In ECLs, we had a write-back of EUR 103 million, with a coverage level of 3.6%. Obviously, from December 2020, we felt we were very conservative and forward-looking with our provisioning approach. What's happened in the last six months, you can see on the left-hand side here the movements that have led to this write-back. The economic environment has undoubtedly changed for the better, and our expectations are heightened. We had a small write-back, which was related to macroeconomic assumptions. I would say the main part of the write-back, though, is related to recoveries and redemptions. Obviously, when you have high provision levels and your customers continue to repay principal and interest, you will naturally just see those redemptions coming through. We finished the year with a write-back of EUR 103 million, or the half year, with EUR 103 million, and that incorporates a post-model adjustment. What I've tried to do on the right-hand side here is really just look at the ECL stock and try to explain that and break that out a little bit more. From the end of the year, we had an ECL stock of EUR 2.5 billion. That's reduced down to EUR 2.1 billion. The main area of reduction there was us utilizing ECL stock as we executed portfolio sales in the first half of the year. Of the EUR 500 million of PMAs that remain, I would say that 50% are related to pre-COVID legacy items, and 50% are related to COVID-related items. Obviously as payment breaks matured and we had PMAs relating to them, as payment break matures, those PMAs get written back. We are remaining conservative and cautious for the second half of the year. We want to wait and see what the impact is going to be on individuals and on businesses as government supports have been withdrawn. We do think that that's something that will play out between H2 and H1. Overall, we feel we're very adequately provided at 3.6%. I think for the end of the year, we would expect, or the second half of the year, we need to wait and see, obviously, how the environment plays out, and we need to see exactly what the impacts are going to be when those government supports are withdrawn, particularly items like unemployment. We think there'll probably be a small write-back in the second half of the year, but not as large as it has been for H1. Overall, on the balance sheet, it's quite a similar story to the last number of reporting sessions. We're seeing an increase in our balance sheet, very much driven by the liability side. You can see our customer accounts from EUR 82 billion up to EUR 88 billion, deposits by banks from EUR 4 billion up to EUR 10 billion, which is very much related to TLTRO. On the asset side, naturally with the excess liquidity, you are seeing that being placed back with the Central Bank. Loans to Central Banks have increased from EUR 27 billion up to EUR 43 billion, and the other moving parts around performing loans and non-performing loans I will come onto in a second, but broadly stable. Here is the net loan position. We have new lending of EUR 4.5 billion, redemptions of EUR 4.9 billion, a little bit of FX movement, and obviously a portfolio sale in the first half of the year. Given the improved economic environment and looking at the pipelines for our businesses, we certainly see new lending for the year not being less than our previously guided amount of EUR 10 billion. If I was to go through segments, I would say all segments are performing well. I would say the pipeline is very strong, notwithstanding the fact that parts of the U.K. business we're exiting. Corporate and SME business is overall quite strong. Mortgage market performance this year in the market and for AIB has been as strong, we expect to see that continuing. The only area where there's probably muted growth is in the consumer lending space, credit cards, personal loans. Given the series of lockdowns that have taken place, the ability to spend or the requirement has not been as great, obviously with the buildup of liabilities as well. Overall, very optimistic for the second half of the year in terms of new lending. Non-performing exposures as a quantum moved from EUR 4.3 billion down to EUR 3.8 billion. Redemptions and flow to NPEs effectively netting off, then a portfolio sale of EUR 600 million making the main reduction. Management is very focused on reducing NPEs beneath that 3% target, we believe we have the ways, means, and track record to do that. Funding and capital, again, just to break out a little bit further, the liability side. The wholesale increase is really driven by TLTRO, then I would say the deposits increase is evenly split between retail-type accounts and corporate SME accounts. Our key liquidity regulatory metrics, LCR, NSFR, very comfortably above all minimums. We've met our MREL target. We have a total quantum of EUR 6.6 billion of MREL-eligible debt issued, post the EUR 750 million that we executed in Q2 2021. TLTRO, as I mentioned, we would have drawn down an additional 6 billion at the end of June, bringing that total quantum to EUR 10 billion. Fully loaded capital, 16.4%, which is up 80 basis points. I'll just try and break this out a little bit. 110 basis points of this increase is due to capital generation. We took a 30 basis points dividend accrual, which is really a signal from management about the commitment to begin to return capital to shareholders after the COVID year. There was an RWA reduction of 60 basis points, and included in that is benefits of SME 501, around 10 basis points, portfolio sale of around 10 basis points, and then lower volumes and credit grade movements gave a positive 30 basis points. All in all, that gives us strong buffers to MDA SREP of 10.19%, so that's 6.2% on a fully loaded basis or 9.1% on a transitional basis. For the second half of the year, we're going to see strong capital generation, and we think there's a capital tailwind or some additional SME 501 benefit of around 20 basis points. Our capital target revision is now at greater than 13.5%. We feel that that's the appropriate CET1 target for AIB, and the reasons for that are that our capital stack is now optimized with AT1 and Tier 2 buckets filled. Our SREP P2R reduced from 3% down to 1.69% on the back of that issuance. That leaves us with a buffer of greater than 3% from SREP to the medium-term target of greater than 13.5%. We think that this more accurately reflects the risk profile of the group, but we'll obviously look to explore further RWA efficiency measures as we go forward. With respect to distribution policy, we obviously monitor all regulatory developments, and things are becoming a lot clearer in that area. Management's focus has always been for 2021 to return to profitability and to ensure that we're able to implement our existing dividend policy, which would allow for a 40%- 60% dividend payout. That's obviously a payout in 2022 from 2021 results. We'll obviously look at the balance between dividends and buybacks at the appropriate time, which will be early in 2022. What I've tried to do here on the capital slide below is from the existing position of 16.4% to the 2023 end state of 13.5%, look at the main moving parts. I think the inorganics initiatives that Colin has talked to will have an impact of around 180 basis points. We think 10-15 basis points of that will be associated with Goodbody in 2021, and the main bulk of it will be related to the onboarding of the Ulster loans, which will happen throughout 2022. We think we'll continue to make RWA efficiencies, we'll be capital generative, and we'll distribute profits to shareholders. As Colin mentioned, we've revised our medium-term targets, and there's really two main things that have given us the confidence to commit to these new targets. On the organic side, there is undoubtedly an improved economic outlook in our core market. The landscape is changing very quickly and evolving very quickly. We believe that that will give us further loan book growth and further fee income opportunities over what we would have expected at December when we set these targets. Our CET1 target, as I mentioned, is adjusted to 13.5%, which we feel is appropriate for a bank with our risk profile. Lastly, the inorganic items that Colin would have talked to, if I was to bundle those together, we believe by 2023 there'll be a revenue impact of around EUR 230 million, an RWA impact of around EUR 5.8 billion, noting that we're dealing with a live book here. All of these initiatives on a standalone basis are ROTE accretive. Obviously, I would say the costs and the CET1 target are inputs to a one model to show an ROTE. We're comfortable committing to this greater than 9% target. Within the costs, I would note that when we look at costs of EUR 1,475 million, that would exclude regulatory levies, it would exclude exceptionals, but it includes all of the inorganic items that we have talked about. Indeed, the change in cost target from EUR 1.35 million to EUR 1,475 million is predominantly driven by the cost of those inorganic items, and in addition, a small amount of EUR 15 million, which we have attributed to further growth, which we believe is forthcoming in the coming years from our core market. Thank you very much, and I shall hand it over to Q&A. Thanks, all. We'll go to the telephone lines now. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel that request, please press the hash key. Once again, that's star one to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Raul Sinha at JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks very much for the presentation and for the questions. Maybe two sort of broader ones and a kind of quick one. Firstly on the impact of the acquisitions, and particularly Ulster, could you give us a sense of the quality of the book as you are seeing it? Just I recognize that the risk-weighted asset density on your portfolio is much higher for the same assets than it was for NatWest. I was just wondering if there is some scope for optimization, and whether that EUR 230 million, and the EUR 100 million sort of NII guidance for the Ulster impact sort of includes In our look through of any sort of stabilization in that portfolio. Secondly, on Goodbody, I was wondering if you can give us some sense of the top-line momentum within that business recently. Obviously, wealth and equities businesses have been doing quite well across the sector. For some of us who are less familiar with the inner workings, it'd be useful to get a sense of how much momentum they're carrying inside Goodbody. I wanted to go back to the question around excess capital, noting that the business is very strongly capital generative, and you've still got a lot of room above your 13.5% sort of new target. How would you think about further acquisitions? There have been some comments in the press about you looking at further books versus the need to return capital back to shareholders via share buybacks trades. Thanks so much. Thanks, Raul. I'll give some comments in relation to those questions, and I'll let Donal take over then. Look, we obviously have great detail now in relation to the loan book that we're taking over from Ulster. When you combine that loan book with our existing AIB loan book, we're actually very happy with the complexion. It actually looks very good from a diversification and risk balance across the group, the enlarged group. In relation to Goodbody, I'm not going to put any metrics on this, but I can say that they have had a very good first half of the year, and they are performing well ahead of where we would have expected them to perform. The acquisition that we made and the commercial agreements that we concluded with them are looking very good from our perspective now on the back of a very solid performance from our future colleagues and their customers in that business. Lastly, you asked a question in relation to excess capital and future inorganics. We've been really busy on the inorganic front. Our focus now is very much on integrating the businesses that we are either acquiring or that we're forming in a greenfield way, such as the joint venture with Great-West Lifeco. We are aware that there's market speculation out there. We don't comment on market speculation, good, bad, or indifferent. What I can say, we have a strong capital position. We are generating capital at a good pace. This is an evolving banking market. We remain very alert to the opportunities that may arise as that market evolves. We've got two simple filters to apply to this. Firstly, is it strategically coherent? Does it fit with our existing strategy? Secondly, would any future acquisitions be accretive to our enhanced ROTE target? They're the two lenses that we'd apply to every potential opportunity that may or may not arise. Donal? Yeah, look, we've obviously moved into and closed a transaction with Ulster Bank. On the comments that we're very comfortable with the mix and the makeup. Obviously, as we integrate the portfolio, what'll happen is, their IFRS9 PDs and ours will have to be reconciled, but that's going to be a 2022 event. Part of the deal, we're buying a performing loan portfolio. We're not buying NPEs, so we're very comfortable with the discussions around the quality of the loan book. Thanks so much. If I can just follow up, in terms of the risk of asset density, there is obviously a gap between where your book sits and where that book was in NatWest. I am just wondering, does that converge over time, or do you think that just stays, and you look to optimize that over time? Good question. I think there's two parts to it. Okay. There's the on-balance-sheet RWAs, which are related to the loans, and we do think that we'll be able to make efficiencies as we implement the SME 501 benefits. Also, as you know, there was a large off-balance-sheet part to the transaction. That's really related to larger exposures with larger wholesale accounts. As we onboard these customers, we'll have to, on a case-by-case basis, look at the overall relationships, and ensure that we're able to generate sufficient cross-selling opportunities out of these relationships. Indeed, the construct in Ulster was cross-selling, let's say, NatWest type product. Now that we have the Goodbody business, we'll be able to look at this on a line-by-line item and see if it stacks up on an overall customer RAROC perspective. We would definitely expect over time to be able to make RWA efficiencies. Got it. Thank you very much. Questions from Eamonn Hughes from Goodbody. Good morning, Eamonn. Questions. Can I maybe just pick up a little bit around, so it's one short term, one medium term, around what you're seeing kind of in the underlying mortgage market, and also actually on the SME market. We always get a lot of detail on the mortgage side. I suppose, look, there's been poor take-up on the Credit Guarantee Scheme, but I suppose over the last, say, two months or so, what you've been seeing, particularly in terms of maybe application and approval data around SME, and as I said, also on the mortgage, and how you think it could perform into H2 on that side. Maybe kind of slightly related, are you seeing further kind of accumulation on the deposit side, or are we starting to see people spend? Colin, I think you mentioned earlier around you can see card activity. Maybe some color around how that's been progressing incrementally over the last, let's call it again, six to eight weeks. Maybe finally, just on RWAs, Donal, you flagged there maybe in the Q&A, the first question, but also this was in the presentation around RWA efficiencies from here. Some of that might be in relation to the Ulster Bank book as it comes on board, but also is there something underlying in the business? Historically, the EBS book's been on standardized. Is there anything else that we could think that might help you over the next sort of two, three years in relation to that sort of ROTE target? Okay. Thanks, Eamonn. On the short-term outlook in relation to the mortgage market, we have seen a very encouraging momentum in terms of our pipeline, our applications pipeline, and our approvals pipeline. We look forward to that having a material impact on our drawdowns and on our drawdown share of the market as we move towards the end of the year. Of course, the mortgage market in total will be substantially greater than we would have expected at the start of the year, we now think it'll be somewhat over EUR 10 billion. We are seeing an improvement in SME sentiment. There's no question about that as the economy reopens, that is inevitably going to lead to improved demand for those products. At the moment, we're sort of seeing mixed patterns across the various SME groups, with better performances coming from the smaller businesses and the medium businesses at this stage. We expect that performance to become closer aligned, in the second half of the year. We haven't yet detected any significant letup in the flow of deposits, notwithstanding the reopening we've seen of the economy. We have already announced that we are going to move all our customers to a EUR 1 million threshold for the charging of negative interest rates, and that will be applied as we move into the fourth quarter of this year. At the moment, negative rates are applied to all business customers with credit balances in excess of EUR 1 million, and all personal customers with credit balances in excess of EUR 3 million. We will align both those thresholds at EUR 1 million from October onwards. Yeah, I think on the RWA efficiencies, we are going to be very comprehensive in ensuring that we have availed of all regulatory benefits, particularly in the SME space. We would have had benefits in 2020, we will get benefits in 2021. We don't think that there's any model change benefits coming our way in the short term. I think you can probably expect to see RWA efficiencies as things progress. If the environment pans out as we think it is, those benefits will come in over time. Naturally, as NPEs reduce down towards the 3% ratio, obviously there will be RWA benefits there as well. We've reduced our capital target of 13.5%. We've announced a series of inorganic items, which will utilize around 180 basis points. AIB will become a lot more efficient and proactive in managing its capital going forward. Okay, thanks. Diarmaid Sheridan from Davy, your question is next. Good morning. Colin, good morning, Donal, and thank you for taking my questions and the presentation this morning. A couple of questions, if I may. Firstly, just around dividend accrual, I wonder if you could just help us. Clearly, the regulations require you to make that accrual on the basis of the upper end of your payout. How should we think about that when you come to formulate a final decision towards the end of the year in terms of where that might fit within that range? Then just in terms of the form that that payout may take, ultimately, are we looking at this from a perspective of an agreement with your main shareholder in terms of a buyback, or if that cannot be done at this point, is it a cash dividend? Secondly, just around the impairment line, appreciate your comments, Donal, around the conservatism that you've put in. It just feels like there's still quite a significant amount of post-model adjustments there. I just wonder over what timeframe we might see those kind of unwind to the extent that the economic outlook that we see today kind of continues to bear. Just finally, on net interest income, please. It looks like we're reaching an inflection point, either some point in this quarter or in the last quarter, and momentum on negative rates on new lending coming through in the second half will help that significantly. Just in terms of if we look into 2022, those will obviously be still very relevant factors. To what extent are some of those negatives, are they still something that we need to bear in mind, or do you see that as being kind of much more 2021 impact and having much less of an impact in 2022? Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Diarmaid. On the dividend accrual, it's fairly automatic. It's the upper end of our dividend policy, so 60% attributable profits, and that's the accrual that we took. I'd say that's quite formulaic. The reality of the situation will be. In 2022, sit down, I'll present something to the board, have a discussion with the regulators, and we'll agree what the appropriate level is. Whether it be a buyback or whether it be an ordinary dividend, I think it's too early to start getting into that. We are largely ambivalent ourselves. We will work with our stakeholders to see what is the most appropriate thing. From our perspective, the focus has always been in 2021, to return to profitability, to put ourselves in a position to pay as strong a dividend as possible. I'm not going to get into a conversation around ranges. On the impairments, the PMAs of EUR 500 million, I would say that's certainly a reduction from the end of the year, from EUR 700 million down to EUR 500 million. Like I said, the PMAs are split evenly between pre and post-COVID. As we look to reduce our NPE ratio, you will see the pre-COVID PMAs reducing as we utilize those to get that NPE level lower. We're particularly focused on the legacy NPEs. These are the ones that attract calendar provisioning, et cetera. We're very motivated to look at those. The big question is clearly what do you do with the COVID related PMAs? Mechanically, I'll tell you what can happen, okay? We have 2 million customers in the country. Some are getting government supports. When that government support is withdrawn, one has to naturally assume that either individuals or businesses will find themselves in some form of distress. They'll naturally move through our stages, and naturally come through into stage 2, stage 3. As we see all of that emerging, and we can see exactly what the impact is going to be, on the PMA side, you should expect to see that PMA being unwound. Don't look at that PMA related to COVID as a nailed on write-back to come back. It will disappear, but our expectation is that it will actually be coming through from just underlying activity. The other PMAs, like I said, should reduce over the life to 2023 as we get our NPEs lower than 3%. I think your last question was around NII, and I think if you look at the guidance I would have given on new lending, and what it's going to be for the second half of the year, we are optimistic beyond 2021. There are a significant amount of growth opportunities in the market. We do think by the end of certainly 2021, on a net basis, we'll be in a growth type of environment. The thing that's harder to predict is exactly where liabilities are going. How long will it take for this excess liability position to normalize, should we say? Much as I'd like it, I don't see it all disappearing this summer. I think it's going to take a number of years for that all to work its way through the system. In that period of time, we will have that excess liquidity drag that we'll be fighting against. I do think that the new lending opportunities will more than outpace that. That's where we see the momentum coming, out of 2021 into future years. Okay, thank you. Our next question is from Aman Rakkar at Barclays. Morning, Aman. Morning, Colin, Donal. Hope you guys are well. Yeah, just a couple of points of clarification, if I might, just around the guidance that you've very helpfully given us on the acquisition. Thank you very much for that. Could I just make clear, the GBP 230 million revenue uplift, does that include the JV contribution? I would've guessed that that might have come through as an associate income line, so not necessarily in revenue. I guess that's the first part. If at all possible, are you able to give us a breakdown of the revenue, and maybe even cost by each of the transactions? How much is coming from Goodbody, Ulster, and JV? I guess it'd be really helpful because it allows us to kind of benchmark our expectations for those acquisitions versus kind of what you're saying today. Then just finally, around business income, that has obviously been really strong in H1. I think your guidance for full year does actually imply a slowdown in the actual business income run rate in H2. I wanted to test whether that was okay. What does that actually tell us about the run rate into next year? What should we be expecting from business income, AIB standalone into next year? Thank you. Thank you, Aman. I'm going to let Donal make an executive decision into how open and transparent he's going to be with these disclosures. Donal? Yeah, obviously as we outlined the new targets, it was important for us to disclose from a revenue perspective in particular, what our expectations were going to be, to help you solve for the ROTE target. I think what's in the marketplace for income related to the inorganics looks to me to be a little bit shy. I am not going to break them out separately. It is more like circa EUR 230. I think consensus is a little bit lower. Indeed, I think on the cost side, you are a little bit light as well. I am really just trying to adjust that to the more normalized level. With respect to the Great-West Lifeco income expectations, you are right. Where you will see that in the future is as an associate and as a JV. To enable the JV and for AIB to live up to all of its commitments on effectively distributing all of this, there will be some small costs related to the Lifeco, which are going to come onto our balance sheet. Really not significant at all. You are right, you will expect to see that in the future coming through the JV line. It's not going to be set up until 2022, so I would say the expectations for returns on that are more medium to long term. Whereas I would say Ulster and Goodbody is much more 2021, 2022, and 2023 related, so within this financial plan life cycle. On business income, look, it is always difficult to predict when you get these gains. Effectively, what I have guided for is flattish in that other income for the second half of the year, which would be a base case assumption, which really lands you overall on total other income of around EUR 500 million with a little bit of upside there. Obviously, the benefit of the Goodbody's acquisition, when it closes and comes onto our balance sheet, will appear in the other income line. If you put those together with consensus, that should land you with the year-end number. Obviously, we will have growth into 2022, with the full year's benefit of Goodbody as we acquire and we bring on board all of the Ulster loans. It is not all just interest income, there is other income there as well. We do think that all of the business lines will benefit from these inorganic items. Okay. Our next question is from Andrew Coombs from Citi. Good morning. Good morning. A couple of clarifications from me, please. Firstly, on the revised return on tangible equity midterm target, can you just confirm that your through-the-cycle cost of risk assumption is not changing, that the uplift is purely because of the growth opportunities you see and because of the change in the capital requirement? That's the first question. Second question on the net interest margin, we're talking about an inflection point. Trying to just do a back-of-the-envelope exercise here. It looks like you're talking about the second half NIM being broadly in line, if not perhaps marginally better than the exit run rate. Within that, you flagged that you've taken the TLTRO drawdown in June. You're going to change the threshold at which you're charging on deposits. There's kind of a couple of benefits coming through, which would suggest that there are still headwinds offsetting those. I guess, can you just give us a feel for quantification for those two measures, and the underlying drag that you still expect to persist? A final one, it's been kind of addressed before, but if you could just clarify your thoughts on use of excess capital given the change in CET1 requirement and how you do think about buybacks versus more inorganic opportunities? I think our ROTE assumptions, we did not assume any benefit from the euro rate environment, which is the one which impacts us mostly. That's effectively -50 basis points over the life of the plan. That is assumption, one. Two, on our cost of risk assumptions, we didn't make any unusual cost of risk assumptions over and above what I've previously guided to allow us to get to that 9% number. The ways that we will get and exceed the 9% target is to implement all of the inorganic opportunities, maximize all of those revenue opportunities, and indeed, on an organic basis, particularly in our core market, execute and capture all of the opportunities which we believe are going to be available to us in our domestic market with the size of our franchise. On the net interest margin, like you said, the benefits are quite clear with respect to TLTRO and negative rates. The headwind is simply the excess liabilities. There's certain levers that are in my control. There's other levers that are outside of my control. We have a huge franchise in SME, in retail, and if liabilities in the system grow, then liabilities are going to grow on my balance sheet. Currently, and in the short term, that's certainly going to be sitting with the central bank at a negative rate of 50 basis points. Over and above those two measures that I can clearly point to, with increased lending in the second half of the year expected to be up around EUR 5.5 billion, they're the best self-help measures that we can make. Obviously the acquisition of the Ulster Bank was a loan-only acquisition, again, reducing the deposit. We're very focused on ensuring that we're able to utilize our liquidity and capital position on a sensible basis. I think on the excess capital position, I'll flip that one across to Colin to have a go at. Yeah. We have demonstrated our strong capability over the past number of quarters in terms of originating acquisitions and delivering them. We have a determination to return the capital that we generate on an annual basis in line with our ordinary dividend policy. We will continue to be alert to opportunities that may arise. I'm not going to speculate on what they are. Some of them I mightn't even be aware of. Where we do consider further inorganic activity, it will be very much aligned to our strategy, and it will be very much focused on ensuring that any further activity we engage in is supporting the business on delivering an ROTE north of 9%. We have a big job ahead of us. We've got a big transformation plan that we're implementing across the business, and we're doing it bang on track and very happy with the progress there. Of course, we also have three significant inorganic initiatives already that we are working to integrate into our business. We have a strong capital position. We have a determination to return to distributions when it is safe to do so with the agreement of our regulator, and we'll remain alert to the evolution of the banking landscape here in the Republic of Ireland. Our next question is from Chris Cant from Autonomous Research. Good morning, Christopher. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I had one sort of number question, please. On RWAs, I think at the strategy update, you talked about a EUR 52 billion -EUR 53 billion RWA base when you were thinking about your medium-term targets. Obviously, there's a few things going on with the inorganics. You're talking about further efficiencies and seem a bit more upbeat on organic growth now. Does that number now shift to something like EUR 57 billion, EUR 58 billion? Is that the sort of right ballpark that we should be thinking about? That would be the first question, please. Yeah, good question, Chris. What I tried to do in the medium-term slide is outline the RWA impact of the Ulster book as we currently see it. The way that's going to play out is, we've identified a portfolio, we have an agreement. Now we need to just transfer it onto the balance sheet. We're going to have to wait and see exactly, between now and then, if there's any refis, increases, et cetera. Definitely safest to use EUR 5.8 billion overall for all of those inorganic items. That's gonna be day one effect. Obviously, once we have those assets on the balance sheet, then we're able to review them, to see if we can make further efficiencies, whether they are self-help items like implementation of SME 501, or whether they're just customer relationship issues. Historically, in AIB, when we were faced with large syndicated deals with, let's say, large corporates, we often shied away from those because we weren't able to generate additional cross-sell opportunities for dealing with some of these larger customers. The strategic rationale of the Goodbody acquisition was to ensure that on top of very vanilla cross-sell products like trade finance, FX, we now have some advisory, we now have some ECM, we now have some DCM capabilities. We do expect to be able to make those relationships work in the future, from a total customer perspective. If we can't, well, then, we'll obviously look to adjust RWAs through reductions. If I think about the five, eight, a little bit against that for some further 501 impacts and any efficiency savings you have on that relationship book, the off-balance-sheet stuff, it feels like E UR 57 billion, EUR 58 billion is about right. If I kind of work through your guidance and think my way back up to P&L. Your underlying, I guess, pre-revenue guidance, it feels like that's maybe 2%-3% ahead of where you would've been thinking in December pre-M&A. Is that the sort of improvement in the environment that you're flagging? Some of the language around the outlook for loan growth seems quite a lot more upbeat than you've been in the last 18 months certainly. Well, look, I think that the environment certainly has improved. More importantly, the range of outcomes has narrowed. That really is the key. There's an improved macroeconomic environment. I think we feel in our core market in Ireland, there's definitely a changing landscape. There's lots of moving parts at the moment. As the largest player in Ireland, we feel that we will be a beneficiary as the economy re-emerges in all of the different sectors, whether it be mortgage, retail, SME, corporate, across the board. Yeah, we are a little bit more optimistic on the outlook, certainly than this time last year when we hadn't much line of sight on what a pandemic meant. Here we are a year later, definitely a lot more comfortable with our understanding of the outlook, which is what has allowed us to change the targets and commit to them. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks so much indeed. We're gone past our allotted time, and we ought to bring this session to a close. I just want to finish by thanking you all for joining us this morning, and we look forward to updating you on our progress later on this year. Thanks again, and we'll talk soon.