Mr. John Hurley:

I believe that the budgets submitted by the Financial Regulator would have been accepted and approved. There would've been a consultative mechanism with the Minister. And I think the building up of staffing in the Financial Regulator over a period of time, starting in 2003, unfortunately, coincided with the building up and developments of the problems in the Irish economy. The timing of the creation of the Financial Regulator was unfortunate when one looks back in hindsight, where you were splitting responsibilities within an institution. And, also, the Financial Regulator was given very significant responsibilities for the consumer function at the time so it was balancing these functions in a whole new environment. I think it was unfortunate that the functions were split at that particular moment in time just as, in fact, the bubble was developing.