Ms Josephine Feehily:

Absolutely not. I have never met the national broadcasters in my life. The only strategy meeting we had about communications was with this team and a few more. We sat around a table. We said this is a new tax that affects everybody and that we needed a communications strategy and a spokesperson. We decided to launch it with a press conference. We had trouble as the room was not big enough, as the Deputy may recall. Ms Vivienne Dempsey was selected as our national spokesperson. We trained 20 people and made them available to local radio. That strategy was worked out in my office with me and my team. I never discussed with any media outlet how we would expect them to handle this issue. To be honest, it never even occurred to me. I would have thought they would tell me to take a running jump if I tried. It never ever occurred to me that would be an appropriate way to do this.