Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

I received a phone call from the Taoiseach offering me the Government's nomination. I thought about it for a couple of days and I said "Yes". The Minister of the day, current Minister, told me that he had not ... this was not his suggestion or initiative. I suspect this because I had said to him some months before, not long after he joined the Department, I said to him, "Look, physically speaking, I'm not sure I can keep going for five more years", which would have been my term. In fact, I wasn't sure I could keep going for two more years at the current pace. I might have ceased to be effective, so I had said to him, "Look, you know, let's get you settled in, I'll stick with it for as long as you want, but you have to be aware that there's that issue."

So when the Taoiseach talked to me I thought maybe this was coming from the Minister, the Minister said "No", not from him. So ... but the timing, from my point of view, was reasonably good. The Government was in ... was bedding down, they'd been there for six months, I would be still in situfor another four or five months. The transition had happened, so it was, you know, it was positive. I was quite positive also to the idea that we would have a, you know, that the Department could have a new Secretary General that was based ... that was selected from the broad universe of people available, which is what happened in effect. In fact the job was thrown open worldwide and there was a real attempt globally to bring people into the, you know ... to have the best possible field. So that's what happened, there's nothing sinister that I'm aware of.