Dr. Michael Somers:

Well, I mean, I've been beaten up for ... on the public accounts committee for this for years and years and years. Why ... what was our pay model? When the NTMA was set up, it was set up because we could not hold staff. By the way, I was secretary of the Department of Defence. I was enjoying myself over there, you know, it was a boy scout's dream - best job I ever had. The Government changed in 1987 and I was hauled back to the Department of Finance to, as Mr. Haughey said it, you know, he knew something about financial affairs, we've got to get this scene in order. Now, you actually couldn't get staff into the place on the pay rates and you ... anybody who knew anything about the financial affairs then left, they went off to brokers, banks, whatever. They left. We were playing against the best in the world. We were borrowing in every currency that you could imagine because we had Irish pounds, you couldn't borrow very much in Irish pounds, we were borrowing Kuwaiti dinar, dirhams, yen - everything. It was quite a tricky business because you had to have some knowledge of the capital markets of the world and we did not have that expertise in the Department of Finance.

So we were playing against the Goldman Sachses and the Merrill Lynches and everything else and the general view was we were losing. That we were not getting the best deals. And the Government of the day said, "Okay, if you can't beat them join them. We'll set up the NTMA." And Albert Reynolds was very clear about this in the Dáil, that, "We'll pay whatever it takes to get the best because no matter what we pay people, it's still a fraction of what you can gain or lose by a good decision compared to a bad decision." So I hired people in on the basis of a basic rate of pay and a performance-related bonus and a car and, I think, VHI. Now the car, because of the BIK thing was a questionable thing. And we hired people in and we, you know, we got the debt, I think, under control - at lease we got the interest bill under control. And gradually, then ... I was approached by Dermot Gleeson then, who was the Attorney General, and he said to me that the whole question of people suing the State had got out of control. We had the question of the Army, I think virtually the whole Army sued for deafness and it was not well-handled. And there were other cases coming up - I mean, there was asbestosis and all kinds of things coming up - and he came over to me and he said, "Could you fellas set up some sort of an organisation that would pay people and not have the State ripped off?", because he said he saw it on both sides; he saw it, you know, claiming on behalf of people and then, as Attorney General, trying to defend the cases. So I said, "Well, I know nothing about it", and he said, "Well, you're the only ones that have the commercial capability because you can hire people in and you can pay them".

So anyway he ... that Government lost office then and then it went onto David Byrne, who became the new Attorney General, I said to him, "Do you want to proceed with this?" and he was very enthusiastic. And he went off as EU Commissioner ... so he was ... sorry?