Mr. Ed Mulhall:

I do not mind answering that question if the Deputy wishes me to answer. The main difficulty that RTE journalists had at that time was getting people to answer direct questions right through that period. Everyone remembers pictures from RTE programming of Ministers shaking their heads and denying things that were happening. There were people refusing to give information to correspondents. In fact, at the same time as the BBC was breaking the story that the bailout was happening, RTE's business correspondent was on RTE programming talking about the same issue. The most significant intervention in terms of alerting the public that the denials were wrong was the phone call from Patrick Honohan to "Morning Ireland". That was a very fraught period. It is a long way from the period we are discussing, but in terms of the interaction between Departments and Government representatives and all media, it was a very fraught period. I would be denying a lot of things if I said it was not fraught, because it was a very fraught period.