Professor John Fitzgerald:

I was approached soon after the medium term review was published in December 2005 by people from AIB who said that the board was concerned that the stress tests prescribed were not stressful enough and asked if we would be prepared to do work. I said: "Look, at what we have done in the medium term review with a 30% housing price crash. You can pay us to do more if you want, but I think that is probably enough to give you." Also it was consistent with unemployment rising to 11% and so on. They said they would go off with it. What they did with it, I do not know but as far as I can remember, this initiative did not come from the AIB team, this was coming from somewhere higher in the bank.