Professor John McHale:

I will try to be brief as my colleagues will want to speak again. On the precautionary credit line, we do not give any advice in private. All our advice is public advice and the main way we give that advice is through the assessment reports and through our appearances before the members of this committee. We make ourselves available to the media also. This report came out after the decision about the precautionary line was made but as Dr. Donal Donovan said, we had set out that advice in our previous fiscal assessment report, which was published in April. That advice has been available for a while and we made sure to amplify that advice through the media, letting the public and also the Government know our thinking on that. We do not advise the Government privately. We have not been set up that way.