Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Chairman, and I welcome Ms Burke. Can I just go to ... it's ... I don't known what page. It's the second-last place of your statement where you speak about ... that "Senior banking executives [and I'm assuming seventh floor executives] had regular direct contact with senior executives of IFSRA, often without the knowledge of, not to say engagement with, supervisory staff." Now, you took it upon yourself, in October 2006, to ask that the support staff would advise us of the agendas, of whether briefings were required and whether the supervision staff were to be present. "In practice", you said, "this resulted in marginal if any difference, particularly as the crisis escalated" and then you spoke about, saying that:

Staff were regularly requested by senior IFSRA executives to review decisions/issues based on their discussions, or told by contacts in banks that issues had been, or would be, discussed with [other] senior executives. To me, at its most benign, this indicated a disconnect between [the supervision staff] and the senior [seventh floor] IFSRA executives which, in practice, banks used to their advantage. I believe that it also signalled a manifest lack of support for staff, undermining them in their dealings with banks.

Can you expand on that, please, Ms Burke?