Mr. Tom Considine:

Well, first of all ... I think the Department of Finance through the public service side of it, was the employer, if you like, in those talks ... for the public service, so that's the first thing. I think in some other report, it notes there, I forget where it is now but, that essentially, the unions and the private sector representatives tended to dominate the, you know, the settlement, and then it was applied to the public service, sometimes with pay pauses of six months or whatever. But the idea that we didn't ... I mean, the document I submitted with my witness statement, I mean, clearly shows that we were anchoring the advice we gave on competitiveness, it was a big issue, and also on the, if you like, the upcoming calls on the Exchequer over a long period out until 2050. So I don't know whether he had sight of these, I don't know that, and we would have submitted those to the Government and then say, you know ... and absolutely fed in; there were four principal officers from expenditure division on the one that reported in 2003.