Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Thank you and welcome, Ms Herbert. You say on page 4 of your document - and it echoes some of the discussion you had with Deputy O'Donnell just now - where you talk, in the fourth paragraph of your statement, about your relationship with the departmental officials, "From the knowledge I subsequently acquired it is clear that many of these advisers were hampered in their analysis of the crisis by their unswerving belief that our banks were fundamentally sound, and their failure to consider the possibility that their might be a crash rather than a soft landing in the Irish property market." As the old examiner question used to be, discuss and expand on that.