Ms Cathy Herbert:

Yes I think it is very difficult, if you can't talk about a problem. I remember actually the morning of ... the decision to increase the amount to be guaranteed and the deposit guarantee was taken on a Saturday morning and, obviously, ... sorry, the decision arose at a meeting the night before and, obviously, it was one of those meetings that all the various advisers had in the Department with the Minister on the Friday night because he rang me on that Friday night and he said, "There's to be an announcement tomorrow about the deposit guarantee. There's a press release to go out. Could you come in and make sure that the press release is okay?" I went in. I had no hand really in the press release because it was quite a technical matter and it was Kevin Cardiff who was involved in it but the Minister gave some interviews afterwards in Government Buildings and I remember I thought he handled it as well as he could. And I remember turning to Kevin Cardiff and saying, "Was that okay?" And he was very, very tense and said, "Any discussion about the banks at this stage in public is really problematic and difficult." So I began to appreciate and understand the stress that they were operating under. I mean, the discussions about the banks, as I said, in advance of the guarantee was very small, held very tightly among a very small group of officials - it had to be. And it really was, I suppose post the guarantee, that people began to talk about it and that, in a way, made it easier, I suppose, for options to be explored. There was exploration of options but when others were talking about it then and when it was out in the open, you know, I think it widened the range of advice.