Mr. Brian Cowen:

No, there was no intention to mislead but I do believe but I do accept that it was a miscalculation, a political miscalculation on my part and our part once the IMF component of the EU delegation was coming to Dublin. This idea the IMF were in town immediately created this view that it's a fait accompli. What we were doing was, at the time, and that was the situation right up to the meeting, I think, of the 16th, on the Tuesday when Brian was ... Brian Lenihan was there as Finance Minister for the country at an ECOFIN or a Eurogroup meeting was ... he was coming under pressure all right.

People ... there were colleagues were saying to him, you know, "You need to go into a bailout programme." Brian was simply saying, "Well I haven't a mandate to do that, that would have to be a Cabinet decision. We're making progress, we're discussing what it might look like were we to do it and we have legitimate concerns that we want cleared up, including on corporation tax." And we were ... he said to them, in an effort to be co-operative, in an effort to be helpful to show our bona fides, he was saying, ''Well, the next meeting we can have it in Dublin. The next meeting with officials we'll have it in Dublin. You come over to us." And that, sort of, then very quickly became a fait accomplias far as some people were concerned.