Mr. Frank Daly:

I was initially contacted by David Doyle, who was the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, and I subsequently got a call from the Minister, Brian Lenihan. I asked for a day or two to think about it and I was told, "No, we want a decision today." So, if you want some colour, I walked Dún Laoghaire pier and thought about it and then said "Yes".

The actual construction then beyond that ... I mean, at that stage the board ... the membership of the board had by and large been decided and I think ... I'm not sure of this, but I may have been the last piece of the jigsaw being slotted in. It was an unusual board in the sense that my understanding is that while you couldn't say it was approved across the political spectrum, there was, as I understand it, consultation with all of the political parties about the overall representation and that I think was to ... I think quite usefully to get political buy-in to the whole NAMA scheme but also to get a view across the spectrum that the board was going to be independent. So that was sort of my involvement on it. We had our first board meeting, I think in December and ... 23 December, and a lot of work had been done by Mr. McDonagh and a small team and then we began to scale up the organisation to put in place all of the procedures and processes and all of that.