Proessor Patrick Honohan:

As the Deputy knows, I raised this question right away when these tapes emerged. I repeat that the behaviour in the tapes is outrageous and, indeed, more broadly, the mismanagement of that bank is almost beyond belief. That is clear. Incidentally, I have looked at some of the headlines. My grandfather was a sub-editor in the Irish Independent and he would turn in his grave to see our very legalistic statement turned into "Central Bank sees no wrong" - yes, it does see wrong - and "Central Bank gives clean bill of health" - absolutely not. However, there is a bar. As the Deputy knows and has acknowledged in a way, it is a far remove from that to the statement we have here. Why did we issue that statement yesterday? It was not to stop anything, and it does not stop anything. We owe it to the public not to pretend that we have sufficient new evidence of criminality. We cannot say we are working on it and that we have sufficient evidence when we do not. We owe it to the public to say: "We looked at this. We said we would look at it and we did, but we do not have anything new". We are not slow to go to the Garda with suspicions of this or that. We do that, and we do not talk about it. In this case, however, there was a big public airing, but we have nothing new. That is all it means. It does not mean something else might come up or that other things can be going on about it. I wish to put that clearly on the record. It was because we want to communicate fairly and squarely with the public.