Mr. Paul Dobey:

It's a meeting with Kevin Cardiff on 27 February 2009. It's with the committee but it is misdated. It actually has a date on it of 26 February 2008 but, anyway, that's with the committee in the documents we submitted.

I .. I'll just pick up my train of thought there. He noted that these two banks were of systemic importance to the Irish economy, and this is a note, a contemporaneous note done of the meeting, "will not be allowed to fall over". That was one assurance we got.

He also noted the Government would be reluctant to step in with additional investment or to nationalise AIB unless there was force majeure. He noted that the Government had no interest in managing or controlling the banks but the properly functioning banking system was of critical importance to the country. He did note, however, that the Department would seek to influence credit, remuneration, and regulatory and risk policies in the bank, and that some of this was already happening under the Government's bank guarantee scheme.

There was ... I was concerned about M&T, and I had a discussion with him in relation to M&T, because we were carrying goodwill on the financial statements of AIB. And I asked whether AIB could be forced to dispose of M&T, and that would have been one of the ways that AIB could have raised capital, or they could have disposed of Poland:

KC [that's Kevin Cardiff] did note that these business interests [that's Poland and M&T] had generated good diversity and potentially growth of earnings for AIB. He noted that it was unlikely that the Government would support significant growth in AIB's overseas business or emerging businesses at the expense of providing funding to the consumer, mortgage or SME sector in Ireland [which obviously was the priority for the Government].

There was some discussion around the state of the banking system in Ireland, including some positive comments from Kevin Cardiff regarding the Government support for six banks, subject to the Government guarantee. Kevin Cardiff did not give any assurance on the extension of the Government guarantee beyond its two-year end date of September 2010 and noted this was one option open to the Government. And then we had a discussion around emergency liquidity assistance funding from the ECB. So they were the assurances we got from the Department of Finance.