Mr. John McDonnell:

We always welcome engagement with the regulator but, as I said, we hadn't ... we did not have the right to raise matters with the regulator. We would have met with the regulator where the regulator asked us to meet ... to meet ... asked to meet with us. We had interaction with the staff of the regulator but we did not meet the regulator himself over that period. I don't believe the staff of the regulator sought to meet with us in the context of our audit of Bank of Ireland.

Subsequent to the financial crisis there is a ... now an auditor protocol and we would meet with the regulator on a very ... a very regular basis - at the start of our audit, during the ... during the execution of our audit and at the end of our audit. And we welcome that engagement with the regulator and it's working very well. And also, the regulator has now started to ask us to ... to do specific work for them current ... around GL44 and that work allows the regulator to direct us to do certain work which might be of benefit to their role. The one thing I would say is the regulator is a very different role to the audit firms'. The regulator's role is about the safety and soundness of the banks, whereas a set of financial statements is around whether the financial statements give a true and fair view of past transactions and events. As I said in my opening remarks ... you know ... financial ... a set of financial statements are not about stability, they're not about capital adequacy and they're ... they're the primary concerns of the regulator. So they ... we've different objectives. But I do think it's good that we have engagement.