Mr. Dermot McCarthy:

So I noticed. I can't say why it was favoured by Government but I suspect it might have been for the reasons that it seemed to me to be a possible way forward, as a member of the committee. I should say that I was representing the Department nominally because the Department had an IFSC responsibility. At that time, I had no involvement with the IFSC, so mine was a watching brief. And in the discussion, it seemed to me that the desire to have a focus for accountability and engagement through a board, a statutory board, which would be accountable to the Oireachtas, was important but the ... equally, it was important to have a clear, direct oversight from a financial stability point of view from the Central Bank functions. And, therefore, it seemed to me that a process which had a focus for accountability and operational autonomy but overseen by a stability framework made sense, and I suspect it did to the members of the Government as well.