Dr. Michael Somers:

-----who I think suggested that I had denuded the Department of economists. And I actually wrote a letter to the paper, because somebody drew my attention to this thing, and said, "You shouldn't let this thing go, you know, without any challenge because it looks as though you've ... you're the cause of the Department of Finance." I think he suggested that the Department was not in a position to deal with the crisis when it occurred because the NTMA had taken the economists out of the Department. Now, in fact, there was a 15-year gap, and I didn't take any economists out of the Department of Finance. I took ... 25 people decided to follow me, and they took a ferocious risk in doing it, because they were warned that if they joined me in trying to set up the NTMA, they had to resign as civil servants and there was no coming back and they'd be out on the streets. They said I'd fail, and they'd be out on the streets within a year. But none of them were actual economists. We took, I suppose, a high-profile activity out of the Department of Finance. We were being paid more than they were being paid, we operated a different model. I mean, we operated a professional model. We hired in an awful lot of professionals.