Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

After the Government made the decision to guarantee the institutions, a work stream started immediately, an intense work stream started immediately, I think, on 1 or 2 October, which was effectively to deal with the European Commission in terms of the guarantee, who were taken, as everybody knows, by surprise by this guarantee to be announced. And William was the technical liaison person with the European Commission and I was, I suppose, asked to help him out in terms of the design of the ... I suppose, the modus operandi of the guarantee, the, sort of, certain consequences for the banks arising out of this. And myself and William had a lot of engagement with the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator people and Cox's who were involved advising in ... and Merrill Lynch, in terms of working out the issues as they came up, in terms of designing the structure of that guarantee. And the decision had been taken ... the guarantee, at that stage it included sub debt, it was a two-year guarantee and William had asked me a question, which I think he said himself in his own evidence, that he mightn't have appreciated the complexities or differences between dated subordinated debt and undated subordinated debt and, you know, what happens if you're going to issue and would they be ... like, what the European Commission was always concerned about was competition issues, was ... well, if you were able to do something that some other country couldn't, or another bank couldn't in another country, was that not, you know, raising competition or state aid issues so he asked me that question, I responded, and gave him my view.