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

Okay, so maybe you can explain to this committee, then, Mr. Cardiff, because Mr. McDonagh, in earlier testimony to this inquiry, said that the NTMA got a telephone call on the eve of the guarantee, that they arrived some time in the evening, to Government Buildings, they were approximately four or five hours outside a door, they were unsure as to what their purpose over there was, and that they were consulted on one occasion in the course of the evening, Mr. McDonagh and another official, and that was to get information with regard to the broader implications of the guarantee with subsidiaries of the banks that would be covered by it, by subsidiaries that might be abroad, and would they have to be covered. If the level of involvement with the NTMA that you're talking about now, prior to the eve of the guarantee, is operating at that intimate level, how was it that the NTMA were outside the door for the ... when the decision was actually being made and, from the testimony that this inquiry has that the only consultation that took place on that night was very much of an ancillary issue, not the substantive one?