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

You gave evidence to the committee in relation to previous questioning about the Merrill Lynch analysis, and the document about €8.5 billion capital for Anglo after ... after capital, and about €2 billion for Nationwide. And you mentioned that Merrill Lynch said this is tip of the finger tips, or some language of that sort. Top of the finger tips data, it wasn't an in-depth data. The question I'm really putting to you is, given your position as general secretary of the Department of Finance for a number of years, given your position as a board member of the Central Bank, do you think it was appropriate that we had to rely on that type of tip of the finger tips data, or whatever suggestion that you had, no real in-depth analysis of where the losses could be in the banks? Could a bright idea not have been, to look in at the start of 2008, to send a team into Anglo Irish Bank when the markets were saying there was going to be losses in terms of their loan book, and actually assess that? So there would at least be a bit more concrete data on the table when the decision had to be taken on the night.