Professor David Farrell:

That is a really core question. I tried to say that in my written document but I may not have expressed it so well. I am talking in general terms here. One could talk about a particular period but it does not matter which period one picks, the point is applicable regardless of who is in government at the time. It is the culture. Culture is such an amorphous thing, is it not? What is culture? It is very hard to define. We have whole courses just trying to define the damn thing. If one is going to change the culture of how an organisation operates, one needs to do some pretty radical transformation and that is what I am trying to suggest. In part of my paper, I talk about how the Oireachtas in the lead up to the banking crisis had existing powers that it could have deployed, for example, to test the veracity of Government's arguments. There were individuals who were saying we had a problem. Why were they not called in? Why was there not some discussion with those individuals? The powers were there and it says a lot about the willingness of Oireachtas Members to deploy the powers they already had.