Mr. Brian Cowen:

What happens at a Eurogroup meeting on the Monday night or at the ECOFIN meeting to the wider 27 on the Tuesday morning is that the president of the European Central Bank would give the view of the bank in relation to monetary and other issues and explain what was happening. They usually looked at things in a very much an international context in terms of global imbalances between themselves and the dollar area and the Chinese yuan situation.

Very generalised comment. As I say to you, communicating formulaically because every ... any change of a sentence from a previous month could give a ... send out a signal that mightn't be correct, you know, that's a very ... central bankers speak in very coded language. Mr. Trichet at the same time would ... I'm not trying to be facetious, I mean obviously you'd know what the man was talking about, but that was his role in it. The Commissioner, the EU Commissioner would be there to discuss EU economic issues generally, speaking on how the European economy was going, also in relation to the Eurogroup measures at that time, during my time as the Minister, there was review of the Stability and Growth Pact going on. Unfortunately it wasn't about tightening the pact but trying to accommodate those who were in excessive deficit procedure. We were seen as one of the best in class. We met the central criteria more successfully than anyone else bar maybe Luxembourg.