Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Yes, now at the meetings and I mean, there was one particular e-mail, I remember, back on, I don't know the 20 or 21 September after one of these meetings and I think it was a Saturday or a Sunday and they were talking doing ... about Goldman Sachs doing a review of the INBS book and I think I'd just arrived home and I just took up my BlackBerry and I sat there and I said "These are questions I want to know the answers to" and I listed 33 questions, which I wrote out on my BlackBerry and e-mailed them to Mr. Cardiff and said "These are questions that should be asked as part of this review" and I went back and looked at these question and, like, they're right. You don't have to be ... they're common sense questions in terms of that. So there was no, I suppose, Senator, coming back to the main point here, the issue here is that there was very little information about the profile of the banks' assets and liabilities in the system. In September 2008 when I ... the Department of Finance were exploring a range of options to try and see, and every option needed to be challenged, absolutely, and every option needed to be thought about and that's absolutely right. But I suppose when that came into me on 26 September at half one from Mr. Beausang, who is a guy who worked incredibly hard during the whole financial crisis, I took the view, I said, they're exploring a range of options but this option ... I ... just in my response really was to respond back in, probably, not in a ... just to set out the key points, because he was looking for a quick response, just to say, you know you can ... it was almost like my view and my colleague's view that this was an option that can be dismissed very easily if you're exploring a range of options.