Mr. William Beausang:

No, you see, you need to ... you know, and I think it's documented in the Honohan report, in particular, when you talk about financial stability, the Central Bank has a distinct role in ascertaining whether the banking system is stable and whether there's any ... what is the scale of systemic risk that's there for the banking sector. The Department's involvement then, on my area of the Department, in looking at the banks specifically, is actually very specific and looking at the regulatory structures itself, the responsibility for the legislation that we have, but it's also then the planning for a difficulty but we don't have a role and we didn't have the information and we would have been precluded from getting the information that would have allowed us to make any independent assessment. And I think it's Donal Donovan, in his book, makes the point that, I mean, the Department ... the Central Bank would certainly have given the Department short shrift, if it had arrived at its door, telling ... and I'm ... asking or requesting to get involved in financial stability analysis. In my evidence in section 5.9, I go ... because I mean it's obviously a hugely legitimate question to ask, but I go through a range of issues which we took reassurance from in relation to banking ... in relation to the stability of the banking system. I've mentioned already, yes ... I mentioned the Central Bank and IFSRA's legal mandate; I mentioned the regulatory framework that was put in place under Basel II; I mentioned that the Central Bank was part of a broader financial stability surveillance, as part of the euro system, as part of the ECB; there was the financial stability reports; There was the IMF, FSAP and the OECD reports; there was the favourable ratings from the Irish banks-----