Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I'm gonna ... pressed for time so want to just move to this ... this area here. Mr. Patterson, in 2006, Fitch placed the Irish banks on a lower rated category for macro-potential risks. We know, from the evidence that was presented to Liam O'Reilly, that this was brought before the financial stability co-ordination committee in 2006. The reference - for the secretariat - is in core book, LOR - Vol. 3, 42, but I'm not ... not going to go into quoting from it. The report itself was covered in The Irish Timeson 8 September 2006 and the newspaper reported that, according to Fitch, and I'm quoting from The Irish Timesat the time, it says:

Ireland has a high-quality banking system, but also runs an above average risk of a systemic failure.

[...]

Fitch note[d] that private sector credit as a percentage of [...] GDP will reach 190% in 2006. When this is taken together with the rapid growth in private credit, 21.7% according to the survey, Ireland falls into the "MP[1]3" category, which is Fitch's highest measure of the risk to economic stability.

Was the response of the Financial Regulator, and the Central Bank ... what was the response of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank to this downgrade by Fitch?