Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, I have justified the position on the basis that we were involved in contingency planning and the co-ordination took place between all of these, the Department of Finance, the regulator, the Central Bank, on an ongoing basis from August on. I didn't meet the regulator himself, personally. But the fact is that there were people reporting to me in respect of work that was being done by all of these people The issue of ... on the one hand, as we all know; it is important that there isn't any political interference in an independent regulatory system, particularly one like this. But I have acknowledged that by the same token, if we are to learn lessons from this; is that we need to have some sort of more structured interface between the Department and the agency.