Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 July 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Brian Cowen:
Thank you. Well, in relation to... I think, he may have been referring in the first part of your question to the fact that the Department of Finance, I suppose, are saying they'd like to have had, or he personally would liked to have had some prior notice that this was going to happen. I'd make the point that when Mr. Honohan did have his interview that he did say that this was a matter for the Government. And then, of course, as the interview developed ... well, quite quickly, as it developed, he went on to say that he believed the programme would ensure over these discussions and that it would be of the order of what it was. Obviously, that was a difficult situation for us politically because, suddenly, people like Michael Noonan or whoever come into the Dáil and say, "Patrick Honohan has told us what's going on. You haven't told us what's going on."
And what we were doing at that point, of course, was coming to a conclusion with them over the next couple of days on preparing for the 21 November Cabinet meeting. So, it did put us on the back foot. As I say, it was very unfortunate that that's the way it came out, that's the way it was presented. That was a job for us to do and it put us in a poor light. And I'm not suggesting that the Governor set out to do that or anything like that. He answered the questions as they were put to him and the bottom line is we should have been able ... we should have been saying, "Look, we have these people coming over, we haven't applied yet. We are in discussions with them, we'll see where it takes us. We should come to a conclusion fairly soon on this, one way or the other." And that would have actually been the very accurate, up-to-date situation as it was.
The third question you asked me was what? Sorry, the third bit?
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