Mr. John Hurley:

The Central Bank regularly referred to the growth in lending in its financial stability reports, commented upon this, and set out in those reports the risks resulting from the increased lending, but it also balanced that against other assessments in the reports. And the view in the reports if you ... when you go through them, is that the type of risk that eventually emerge weren't seen as likely at the time. We regarded the banks as sound at the time. We believed on the basis of the assessment coming through the financial stability reports that that was the position. We did warn about the growth in lending and the growth in credit and that was set out very clearly in the reports, with all the warnings of the Central Bank in each of the reports. We set out the warnings in relation to the growth under the different aggregates regularly and I pointed it out when launching financial stability reports on each occasion, and my introductory statement to the financial stability reports would have pointed out these risks.