Professor John FitzGerald:

My suspicion is that it was not. When I was in the Department of Finance in the period 1972- 84, one put one's views on paper and there would be a paper trail which would indicate if the boss was in agreement or not. What was more, in the 1977-79 period when we were very concerned about what was happening, not only did one go on paper but one took a photocopy of a file in case the file disappeared to make sure there was a paper trail. The Wright report says there were verbal warnings but could not find a paper trail of officials saying they had given a warning.

For me as a civil servant - it is the opposite of "Yes, Minister" - the job was to come up with the right answer, tell the Minister what the right answer was, and then the Minister would decide and one would implement the Minister's decision even if one disagreed with it. That is the way I was trained. However, it was on paper and a paper trail was kept so that one may be accountable, say, to this committee and one can show what was said. That does not appear, from the Wright report, to have been part of the culture of the Department. We also know from a number of freedom of information requests - I have details somewhere here, not by us but that appear in the paper, and also from the Nyberg commission - that the Department on a number of occasions amended what junior officials had summarised the ESRI as saying, to possibly say something that we had not said going up the line. That greatly concerned me. When I was in the Department one did not do something like that. There might be disagreement but it would have been on paper.

That is my reading of Nyberg and what has come into the public domain.