Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, I would have had ... I would have debated with myself and with others the whole interest ... the tool of interest rate that a central bank has, and we're going to give that away. But I concluded, and I think rightly, that for a small country like Ireland, although we had the interest rate tool available to us since the foundation of the State, what difference ... what great thing did it do for us?

Effectively, for all that period of time, we followed... went along in the ... London. And up until 1979 or so we had a one-for-one exchange rate but, generally then, even in the interest rates after that, we more or less followed after London. So we ... so although we had the interest rate tool available to us for all these years, it didn't seem to have done an awful lot to grow the Irish economy, give or take, say the glorious period in the '60s. So, therefore, I kind of ... I came to the view that losing the interest rate tool at the time was not the worst thing that could happen. Subsequently, I would look back on, say, what happened from, say, 2003 to 2008 and I would've said, "Well, if we had the interest rate tool then, that it might have made a whole big difference." But like that's ... now I'm going back and I must chastise myself because I'm now doing Mr. Hindsight as well, the same as the rest of the country.