Professor David Farrell:

That is a nicely framed question. The answer is it did. Like all other agencies with which the committee is dealing in the context of its hearings, it contributed in the sense that, as I said, it took its eye off the ball. If at the time of the banking crisis the committee structure had been closer to that which was in place in the Scandinavian countries and if the budgetary process here had been closer to that in the newer east European democracies, which have a powerful budgetary office under the control of Parliament that scrutinises in close detail the assumptions underlying a government's budgetary policies and holds it to account, there could be grounds for saying the Oireachtas had done its best. The problem is that was not the case. We did not have the proper structures in place and, as I suggest in my paper, the structures in place still do not appear to be used by any of the committees in place. In that sense, the answer is "Yes".