Mr. John Moran:

If I was in front of the PAC, I would be able to say this is a policy matter, I don't have to describe the answers, right. You're essentially dealing with a rule and by applying it specifically to the banks, you can make it sound different than others. I think every person who runs a business, whether it's a small shopkeeper or a larger business, knows that they should pay tax when they make money, and the system for a long time has said that if you have a loss in one year and the following year you get some recovery of that, we don't charge you tax until such time as you've made back up your losses, right. And that applies to every business, whether it's a small shopkeeper, a plumber, or whoever else. If he makes ... if he loses money for two or three years, the recovery years are not going to be taxed, because they fill the hole of what he had already before, okay? And that's the rule that we're talking about here. Now, apply that to banks, it doesn't seem quite as fair, because the banks lost an awful lot of money and that means that in that recovery period, we may not be able to charge them tax, under the existing rules, until such time as they're kind of back to zero and making a real profit. But I didn't make the rules - they're the rules chosen. And that's what's actually happening there. What was a decision was that there would actually be a form of levy that would actually take some level of taxation from the sector, just to make sure.

Actually, frankly because it was never going to be paying an awful lot of tax for a long time. But, actually ironically, the DTA of which your talking about has perhaps saved the State, because if we get value for that, or some form of value for that from the capital calculations of the banks, right, then we may not have to put in more money into the banks than we actually owe, and yet meet the regulatory approval.