Mr. Bertie Ahern:

The only explanation that I can give is ... I mean, in the end of the day, a lot of this was about risk and they had to have been taking the banking figures that ... you know, right up until the end, Senator, the banks were, when they were being asked questions by the regulator, and I criticised the regulator earlier on, but when they were asked questions by the regulator, they were standing over their figures. They were saying, "These are net worth individuals. These individuals don't have difficulties", and, even when there was collateral changes between one bank and another, the banks were defending that. All's I can assume is that the auditors must have been accepting that the capital that the banks had said they put aside to cover those loans was adequate.

As we all know, and you know in this committee better than anybody, they were far from that.