Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

So those two roles are held concurrently, those two senior positions. Okay. Sorry, so after 2004, the IMF, the OECD and the ECOFIN all clearly recommended a tighter fiscal stance and a building up of a cushion for the time when income from property-related transactions would fall. That was a consistent message coming from those very, very senior observers. And, in fact, in the Regling and Watson report looking back upon that period, it talks about one of the difficulties ... it's on ... I won't take you through the reference documents, as such. What's relevant to you, Mr. Considine, I'll bring up on the screen. But, in page 43 of Regling and Watson, it talks about the "light-touch approach to supervision has been discredited: it sent wrong signals to banks and left supervisors poorly informed about banks' management and governance, potentially impairing crisis [driven] response capacity also", which is the type of cushion type of things we would be looking at.

So I just want to go on now Mr. ... and I'll bring up on the screen, it's related to pre-budget letters from the Central bank in around the period 2004. And this is a narrative document and I just want to take you through two sections of the pages in front of you. The first one is the pre-budget letters to budget 2004 and if you look at the italics section there it says:

Fiscal policy could also play a role in smoothing the adjustment of demand for property by limiting its more speculative components. In this regard, it would seem more appropriate, for example, to allow no further extensions to the termination date of mid-2006 for a range of tax driven incentive schemes for housing.

So there's an early flag up in 2004 there, that something should be done with regards to the tax incentivisation for the property market. Down at the end of the page then, it says in the second last bullet, "After the budget was announced, the board discussed the budget outcome and it was noted that the advice from the Governor was not fully adhered to." I might come back to that in a moment. So, this is a board that your sitting on. Would you have been privy to these documents in your role as the Secretary General the Department of Finance and in your role on the board? Would you have been familiar with these devices and these documents at that time?