Mr. John Hurley:

Well I agree with a number of things. First of all I agreed that I asked him the question. I agreed that I, I asked him whether his bank would be interested in a guarantee, in a broad guarantee.

And he gave me the response which he said at the time, which was the bank wasn't. Now, where I have a slight difference is that I thought this discussion came later. I attended a meeting in Government Buildings on 18 September, the day after I came back from sick leave. The guarantee was raised at that meeting. I'm sure you have it in your papers. And at that meeting, I was asked for my opinion on the guarantee and I said I thought it would be counter-productive when it wasn't being proposed by the Central Bank then. The following day, the discussions on the extension of the guarantee scheme to €100,000 were engaged in and there were discussions with the banks. I thought it was in the context of those discussions, and I looked up the minutes of various meetings and my view in relation to the Bank of Ireland and AIB is recorded in one of the Central Bank notes, minutes, where I recorded that they had a view at a certain stage that they didn't think a broad guarantee was for them. Now, that's the timing I put on it, but I mentioned in my earlier evidence here before the committee that before the summer I would have had quite a number of meetings with banks on the liquidity situation of banks and the collateral situation, on readying up collateral and so on. And before I went into hospital, I would have made a point of understanding the liquidity position facing banks, just ... not just to brief the Minister, which I did before I went into hospital, but also to be prepared for the ECB meeting, the last ECB meeting, in July. So in the context of those discussions, I can't remember it coming up specifically but it's quite possible that somebody mentioned guarantees. It might have been mentioned as a consequence of the Northern Rock guarantee. It might well have come up. The broad guarantee did come up in the context of DSG meetings earlier in the year. So I can't say it didn't come up but I have really no specific recollection of it coming up.