Mr. John Trethowan:

I reviewed the Central Bank report that the Mazars report came from because I knew this issue would be raised today. I will not criticise the Central Bank report or any other commentary on this but I will observe a few things about the tables in the report. The main table shows the number of rejections. All of the countries that have been subject to interventions and assistance are in that table. One must take account of the economic background of a country before one can assign league tables. Ireland lies just above Greece and just behind Spain, Portugal and Italy, all of which have their difficulties at the present time. Ireland's trend is decreasing as the amount of rejections declines, while all the other countries show increases since the previous survey. I guess that is because Ireland was first into the bank restructuring and economic constraints, so we might be further through the cycle than the others. It is an interpretation one could take.