Mr. William Beausang:

The night of the guarantee itself. I was present for the first phase of the discussions. I think Kevin Cardiff's note, there's a sort of a segment of the meeting where Jim Farrell the chair of the Financial Regulator comes in and makes the case for the guarantee and then the discussion extended, you know, there was sort of a broader discussion about other options that were there. The nationalisation option being the main one, I suppose. And at that point, you know, looking at that hand written note at that phase of the meeting, I left the meeting because there was some preparation to be done. What was clear was that contingency arrangements needed to be put in place for the Central Bank, perhaps to provide ELA to the institutions the next day and that would only happen ... the Central Bank will only lend if they have a guarantee, a Government guarantee of that lending or, as it turned out because we wouldn't have had power to give a guarantee for that lending at that point, what they looked for was a letter of comfort saying that any losses on that lending would be made good by the State. So that's what I was involved in, in just putting together ... or perhaps talking to the director general of the bank as to what was the specific language required. But that was part of the contingency planning that was required at that point, Senator.