Mr. Dermot Gleeson:

Well, I mean, AIB had 26,000 employees. I don't know I suppose that's the working population of Waterford or Limerick, I don't know. They're not all going to be perfect but I think we made a serious effort and that I made a serious effort to try and inculcate ethical standards. There had been this disgraceful business in the 90s with foreign exchange, now this is the first foreign exchange issue and you sent me some papers on that and we sent that report to the guards.

We instituted staff training on ethical issues and did surveys about how effective it was and there was ... every year ... and I haven't been able to go back through the minutes, the AIB code of business ethics was sent to every employee and it was approved by the board every single year while I was there. Usually in the spring - I can remember this time of the year.

There was a separate initiative for senior managers who would be taking the more serious decisions and I think the only time I ever addressed a group of managers, managers were run by the CEO. That's the way it works. I run the board and he runs the bank. But I did address a group of senior managers to launch a thing called "Leadership by example" and it was about probity and obeying the law. And in July 2007 Eugene Sheehy and myself launched that so we did make those efforts. We also got an assessment done by an English organisation called the Institute for Business Ethics and they said we were above par for the financial services industry. So there was an attempt to inculcate lawfulness - can I put it that way and I believe that the vast majority of AIB employees were entirely correct in their behaviour.