Ms Geraldine Kennedy:

David McWilliams gets a lot of credit but, as I recall, he predicted the crash in 1999 and it did not happen until eight years later. That is important. If one says something often enough, it will happen. If one were to keep saying now that Fine Gael and the Labour Party would form the next Government or Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael or Sinn Féin and somebody else, one is bound to get something right at some time. Morgan Kelly offered an article in December 2006 to the business section of The Irish Timespredicting a crash of the scale of between 40% and 60%. Peter Murtagh, who is the opinion editor - I hope the Chairman does not mind me mentioning his name - contacted Morgan Kelly subsequently and invited him to write other material because he was the only one at that time expressing that view.

It is my clear understanding that Morgan Kelly's article was turned down by the Sunday Business Post and one of the Independent newspapers, either the Irish Independent or Sunday Independent. I cannot say which one it was and I do not know whether members asked the Irish Independentteam about that in the previous session because we were outside the committee room at the time.