Mr. Tom Considine:

Well, first of all, there was no connection between the two things, I can assure you. What happened in the case of Davy Stockbrokers was that they repurchased some of the equity in the firm in the middle of 2006 and they wanted some independent people on their board and that was ... and I had all appropriate approvals for what I did. There was an actual structure in the Civil Service at the time called the outside appointments board and at the ... I submitted to them the proposal to join Davy's board for their direction and that's what happened. In relation to the functions of the Minister and the Department of Finance, one of them is clearly to make sure that we don't do anything which will undermine a sector of the economy. Now, if we have reason to believe that there was something proposed which could cause a significant loss of business to companies operating in Ireland, of course we have a duty to respond to that and look into it and examine it and see, is it wise? If it were considered to be the right thing to do, we would've gone ahead with it.