Mr. David Begg:

Well, the ... there certainly was an engagement between the two parties on the financial stability question. That was a giant effort. Most of the work on financial stability was done by the economists in the Central Bank but it was signed off by the regulator. It had to be, that was the way it was jointly set up. Now, the problem, in a sense, was that, you know, it's a little bit chicken and egg, the financial stability reports identified all the risks to the economy but qualified them by saying that, you know, it looks as if the banks are sound. Presumably, that was based on feedback which was received concerning the banks and also, in fairness, the stress tests which the Central Bank was responsible for and the IMF was responsible for carrying out.

My own opinion of it is this that if you have a look at the financial stability report for 2006 and 2007, the 2006 report is, you know, it'd be hard to fault it, basically, in terms of looking at the risk and looking at the exposure to the banking system. In 2007 then, there was a, sort of, a pull back from that a little bit because, I think, the rate of price increases began to moderate. There was something like a 3.5% reduction in the rate of house prices, which ... of house price increase, which, I think, was interpreted as a sign that the, you know, that the, the soft landing was actually beginning-----