Mr. Brian Cowen:

Yes. Well, basically on 21 November we were outlining where things were at. The Minister outlined where things were at at that point. He informed his colleagues that preliminary discussions have taken place with the IMF, the EU Commission and the ECB. He also spoke about the serious liquidity problems currently being experienced by the Irish banks again, the difficult budgetary situation, the high cost of Government bonds, meaning to say that we had tactically stepped out of the market for the moment, and the dangers to international stability as perceived by our partners in the European Union. And he went on to talk about those issues and he made the point that discussions at the European level were such that he felt we could and should apply for a programme on the basis that the conditionality he had gleaned from them would be consistent with where we were going ourselves as a Government.