Mr. Eugene McCague:

Sorry, I could deal with that for September and if you need, I'm sure Pádraig could deal with it for subsequently. In relation to September, I suppose the policy issues that were being considered were the ones that Merrill Lynch had laid out and they're in the document you sent. And of those, we were asked to look at two of them. We were looking clearly at the option of the legislation for the nationalisation of Anglo and Irish Nationwide. That was what my main, if not sole, focus over those days was, so we were certainly asked what were the legal issues in relation to that one. And the other one was a lending scheme, an emergency liquidity scheme, a collateralised lending scheme. It was called a secured lending scheme, I think, in the Merrill Lynch paper. There were colleagues in Arthur Cox were asked to look at that and what were the legal issues on drafting on that.

In relation to the other issues on the Merrill Lynch paper, if I recall correctly, there was a good bank-bad bank option. We were never asked to look at that but I think the Merrill Lynch paper itself specifies that that was a second-stage solution, if you like. And liquidation, we were certainly never asked to look at because it was a second-stage one. So that leaves the one, the option that was, ultimately, followed, which was the guarantee of the six institutions. We weren't asked to give any advice on that prior to the decision being taken on the 30th. I know Pádraig and some of his colleagues did some work in relation to legislation after it. We weren't asked for advice on that. I should say that the Bill which we were drafting in relation to nationalisation did have a section in it which was giving the Minister very wide powers ... a wide power to give financial support to a credit institution and financial support included the word "guarantee" but that section would not have been adequate to deal with the type of blanket guarantee that was introduced on 30 September. I just mention that because I think I saw when I was reading that either Mr. Beausang or Mr. Cardiff or one of those gentlemen had mentioned that there was a section in the legislation. And there was, but it was dealing with just a broad power for the Minister to give financial support to institutions; it wasn't in relation to the guarantee. So the short answer to that is we were asked to give advice on nationalisation and on a CLS scheme and we were not asked to give advice on any of the others.