Mr. Brian Cowen:

Yes well I got a phone call from President Barroso I remember when I was engaged in a Donegal by-election at the time. And one of those weekends I was up there and I presume it related to ... at the time the G7 or the G8 was meeting, and he rang me to indicate that Ireland was being mentioned at those meetings as being a country that should consider whether it should go into a programme or not. And I made the strong point to him that, look, the Irish Government's position was that we were well funded well into next year. But obviously you know I was open to our people discussing with them what this conversation was about over there, to come and we'd talk to it in front ... man to man about it and see what the story is - or woman to woman about it - and see what the story is. So that was my interaction with President Barroso, saying to him, you know, "We are well funded, we're not seeking a programme." And then Brian was talking about, you know, was there a parallel programme, was there a probationary programme, was there something that we could be doing that would be available to us should we need it. And then that hardened up into an application to a programme.