Mr. Klaus Regling:

With hindsight it is easy to say that this relationship was not a healthy one, but one has to look back at the culture in bank supervision globally. We also make this point in the report. This was not just an Irish problem as there was a debate at the time about light-touch supervision. There was a widespread view - including in the United States, for instance - that markets would regulate themselves to a large extent. Mr. Greenspan, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve at the time, often talked about this. He is a good example because a few years ago he publicly admitted that this was a mistake. It is another example where something that went wrong in Ireland also went wrong in many other countries, but this element was then reinforced by all the other problems I have just talked about, and which are to be found in the report.