Professor John Fitzgerald:

When Patrick Honohan left in 1997 it left a gap in terms of doing research in the financial sector and we still had some funding and Mr. Colm Kearney joined us in 1998-99 but only stayed a year and is now in Trinity College. He may have moved to Trinity on the day before I came back from Warsaw; I am not sure, it was around that time. He was doing research in this area. I went back and looked at his article last night in The Irish Timeswhich was really good. In regard to the serious mistakes being made, his argument was that the report done on separating the regulator used no evidence, did not look at what was going on outside and it was a bad idea. The Senator can read it in The Irish Timesof 15 October 1999. It was a good article. He had done research in the area and had expertise. It should have been published but it was published a few days later in The Irish Times.