Professor Noel Whelan:

As far as we were concerned, we were conscious and anxious to be clear on our legal position. Up to that point we said, "Let us abide by what the lawyers are saying to us". Then there came a stage when the controversy was moving on and we stopped a meeting and said, "Hold on, we wish to not run counter to public policy". That is still our stated wish and we suddenly said, "Let us put the legal advice aside and [honestly, Deputy] let us then move into disclosing the information".

The Deputy asked earlier about giving it out before Christmas. The Chairman commented in public, I think, about this and I understand perfectly the reason for the commentary and so on. The way things evolved was, as I said to Deputy McDonald in answer to her question, that we could have held it until the new year. Quite honestly, however, when the board took a decision to say, "Okay, we will put the legal advice aside and we will disclose it", rightly or wrongly, we went and disclosed it immediately. One could argue, by God, that just came before Christmas Eve. It did but I can only say that the motive for doing so was to get it out as quickly as possible given that we had decided we had to do so. As I said - and I repeat - we could have waited for the new year and perhaps there would have been no negative comments about it.