Mr. Brian Cowen:

I wasn't ... I mean the point I was making is I think I've explained earlier, I was told that I had never met these people during my time as Minister; they had never met me, and they'd like to have dinner to recognise the fact that I had been Minister for a number of years. And I said it might be discourteous of me not to go. I said, "Fine, I'll do that. When is it"? It's on at ... whenever it was, Tuesday or Wednesday evening, some time at eight o'clock, I said "Okay, I'll see you there. Where do I go in and what do I do? And we'll go up and see them."

And there were some people I knew already. I knew Gary McGann from his time as chief executive of Aer Lingus, now with Smurfit Kappa, he was certainly a person I knew. I don't know who else I knew up there but that's one person I can recall I knew, anyway. I knew Mr. FitzPatrick. I'd met him three or four times in my life at various bank federation things or something like that. He was a well-known figure, obviously. I'd never met the chief executive. I met him that night and I never met him since. And the others ... some of the others I wouldn't know. There was some people who weren't from ... there was a lady there from America, I think, who was a board member. And it started, now it was a sit down socialising and talking away informally, and then at some stage in the proceedings in order, I suppose, to show the meeting had ... wasn't about ... you know, it was about something, was someone gets up and says a few things about the Anglo Irish Bank and what it's doing and the size of it and all the rest of it, you know, and that's about the size of it. I took notes. I wasn't given any documentation; I didn't take any briefing. I was thinking of other things at that stage, heading away home.