Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thanks, Chairman. Mr. Cowen, in your statement, you mentioned that the most important reform had been the reintegration of the Financial Regulator's office back into the Central Bank as a single organisation, and the skill mix has been upgraded. Can you outline why you think was more important, a substantial increase in staff numbers available for potential supervision of financial institutions? Like, between '09 and 2011, the Financial Regulator went up by 64% in numbers, by 243 extra people, and the Central Bank, in that period, went up by 227, 31%.

So, can you just ... were both institutions understaffed, both in terms of numbers and in quality of staff-----