Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, I think we have to come to a conclusion that the oversight wasn't effective. As you say, he was answerable to the Oireachtas, you've heard from the Department of Finance people as to what they saw their role as. In many cases in the past, we had moved over time in terms of public administration to get Departments out of day-to-day affairs of various agencies and people with other responsibilities and get on with strategic policy planning and all this. But I agree with you that you've got to find a balance there all the time and you can go from one extreme to the other where you have interference on day-to-day issues and then you go to the point where you ... the oversight is such that the independence of these agencies allows them to continue on without the act of oversight that you would hope and expect. I just think there are lessons to be learned from that and I think that, you know, you'd have to conclude that, yes, there would be need to be improvement in both cases.