Mr. John Hurley:

The essential change in monetary union is the pooling of decisions on monetary policy. I mean it's a very, very significant change. It means that we didn't have control over our own interest rates. We were looking at interest rates in general across the euro area. Now the ECB and ... and ... didn't have a responsibility for overall regulation and prudential supervision of the sector, but, of course, it has a different responsibility now as a result of this crisis but, certainly, at the time there was a definite lacuna there and that's now been filled.