Mr. William Beausang:

The only information that I'd have on that, Senator, is really indirect information I would have obtained at the DSG, and back in the Department, and talking to more senior officials, David Doyle and Kevin Cardiff, where I would have had an awareness that the Governor, John Hurley, was in constant, or was, you know, in ongoing contact with the president of the ECB in keeping updated and briefed on developments and stresses in the Irish financial sector. I suppose as things intensified, as the crisis intensified into September 2008, as I think other witnesses have mentioned, there was a real impetus to ensuring that we really reinforced the difficulties that we were experiencing at that time at European level. Indeed, in work that I would have done, in a, sort of, scenario note that I would have done back in November 2007, I would have identified the possible requirement for an EU-level intervention to deal with the systemic difficulties that were arising in the Irish financial sector. I mean, this was, kind of, presented as something, you know, what could happen next, what could happen ultimately in terms of how things were moving at that point in time?