Ms Cathy Herbert:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to the members of the committee. I'm happy to be here with you this morning to assist you in whatever way I can in your important endeavour. You have my written statement, which I'm happy to take as read, but before moving on to questions I'd like to make a brief few points about the nature of my work for the late Brian Lenihan.

As you said, Chairman, I was special adviser throughout his time in the Department of Finance. Committee members may know that the legal definition of the role of special adviser is quite broad, and that the Minister to whom the adviser is accountable essentially writes his or her job spec. In my case, my main duty was to advise Brian Lenihan on the communication of Government actions and decisions taken during the crisis, most of which were complex and difficult. Throughout the crisis he was acutely conscious of the need to explain to the citizens the reasons for Government actions and the outcomes they were designed to achieve. His specific objective was to tell the public what went wrong, what the Government was going to do about it and what the outcome of their actions would be. To achieve that objective, I worked closely with officials in the Department of Finance, drafting and providing speeches, providing briefing for Oireachtas debates, drafting articles for print media and advising on media strategy.

The particular job assigned to me by the then Minister was to work with officials and political colleagues in other Departments on the Government's response to the fiscal crisis. Between mid-2008 and April 2011, Brian Lenihan introduced six separate sets of budget correction and in his constant battle to stabilise the public finances. The banking crisis was a separate theatre of battle and initially I had no involvement at all in this area of the Minister's work. Because of its highly confidential nature, particularly in the months before the guarantee, discussion relating to the banks was necessarily held tightly by a very small group of officials. I had no role in any banking policy formulation during that period and I have no recollection of receiving any direct information about the banking matters.

After the guarantee, my involvement in the banking side revolved around the communication of the actions and decisions that the Government had to take to rescue the banks. I contributed to the drafting of speeches and I worked closely with colleagues in the press office preparing for media interviews and responding to the very significant number of media queries relating to the financial crisis in Ireland. The Minister didn't ask me to play any role in the formulation of banking policy or to attend any banking meetings about decisions relating to the banks. He did ask me, along with his press officer, to go to Government Buildings on the night of the guarantee so that we would be fully briefed for what media announcements might arise from the discussions that were taking place that night. I played no part in those discussions and spent the night with other colleagues from the Taoiseach's office in adjoining offices.

Mr. Chairman, in my written statement I have drawn on all the knowledge and information I have been able to assemble, much of it acquired after the events which the committee has asked me to address. Seven years on from the onset of the crisis, I can't now definitively distinguish between my real-time knowledge of events and what I subsequently learned about them and I'd ask the committee to bear the possible distorting impact of this in mind when assessing the information contained in that submission. I'm happy to take your questions.