John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I've only ten minutes so, thank you. I noticed the questioning times had changed a little and I'd ask you to be as brief as you can maybe in response. All of my references are to core document C3b and I want to start on page 40 which is the last page of that where there are several references to Bank ... several references on that page, the end of the third last paragraph, "Bank of Ireland should approach the Government for capital"; the last paragraph, "Consideration was given to an immediate contact with the Government"; but I think that that wasn't followed up on because in the following sentence it said that the budget, the Exchequer budget, was imminent. On page 16 of the same document - the last sentence on that page - it's stated that "Mr. Goggin was going to explore a capital injection by the State". When did Bank of Ireland first explore the idea of a capital injection by the taxpayers? And I might also ask you that at the time, the stated position of the bank publicly, through Mr. Goggin and possibly others, was that no such consideration was happening and that Bank of Ireland did not need taxpayer funding?