Professor John FitzGerald:

I do not know. It was coming from the top. I do not have access to the Department of Finance files but the team working on this, the experience - I said I wanted somebody from the Department of Finance to ride shotgun with us, to go to all the meetings with everybody else because we learned a lot from it and I also felt they would too. The members of the team working on it worked very well and I think they were happy with the result although they may not necessarily have agreed with all of it. It was at a more senior level in the Department - my understanding was that they were unhappy.

There is other material on this. Harry McGee, in The Irish Timesin October 2012, had two pieces where he got information under freedom of information. When we did the 2003 report and said that building construction was too hot and that money should be taken out of the sector, I got the impression that the Department of the Environment was unhappy with it, although I did not get that impression in 2006. What we now know as a result of the Harry McGee stories - or maybe Peter Nyberg, but I think it was Harry McGee - is that the Department of the Environment wrote to the Department of Finance in 2005 about its concern and the then Minister of State, Noel Ahern, the former Taoiseach's brother, got on to Finance to say his Department was concerned about the dangers. Within the Administration - I had heard this independently from the Department of the Environment - they were concerned about the issue. They did not disclose that in our meeting with them but they took action and said they also were worried.