Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Yes ... I remember Kevin Cardiff ringing and saying "Would you come along to this meeting, we're having these meetings ... we're having these meetings in the Central Bank with the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator, would you come along?" and he said "We in the Department of Finance", he says "are policy people. We're not fully au faitwith all the, the sort of, I suppose, capital market side and you've experience of that in the NTMA and would you come along and just ... and sit in the meetings and just give us your view in terms of what's being discussed or what's going on." So we did. But as I said then and I say in my statement today, it really was a bit mind-boggling, certainly to me and I think certainly ... and I think the same with my colleagues, is that there seemed to be no real knowledge of the banks. There's one or two people on each bank. When I was asking questions we couldn't, we couldn't get the information ... the information couldn't be answered. We were questioned about ... because we sort of, I suppose, the nature of people in the NTMA, rightly or wrongly, is that we're questioning types of individuals. And I suppose at the meeting we began to, rather than sitting back and observing what was going on, we decided if we were going to be at the meeting we might start asking questions ourselves and that's why I make reference to the fact that Mr. Neary sort of said ,"Well who are you to be asking questions? What's your locus standihere?"