Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

You can't recall. You refer in the statement in the Wright report and its findings that the Department did warn against the adoption of inappropriate policies, although not as forceful as it should have been. During your tenure as assistant secretary from July 2003 up to the banking crisis, were any internal analyses undertaken on the growing dependency on property-related tax revenues? Was the matter discussed at management board level? If so, how frequently, and what was the general outcome?

Now, I note in your presentation that you do make reference to it on page 10, where you make reference to that you did carry out a report. The question I suppose I'm asking is twofold. Your model was based around that if there was a ... so many ... a 50,000 unit fall in housing output, would give arise to €1.7 billion, how is it we did not model a much deeper collapse than actually happened? So, I suppose what I really want to ask you there is, the type of sensitivity analysis you did there, why wasn't it more in-depth? And, I suppose a kind of, a related area that I ... I suppose, that you might deal with as well, is that when you were looking at that were attempts made to quantify the effects of a soft landing and what impact this would have on Government finance in terms of loss of revenue, increased expenditure? What advice was Government given in this regard? And I'm basing ... because so much was ... of the revenue, was coming in around property.