Mr. Fergus Murphy:

Senator the, the ... number of things there, assets and liabilities, so on the liabilities side of the balance sheet EBS, like other institutions, had become too dependent on wholesale and international funding. Again, just as I summarised quickly earlier on, in 1998 100% of the liability base of EBS was retail deposits. Retail deposits, typically, will stay with an organisation unless there's a significant issue with the organisation. That lack of stability in the liability base was a fundamental issue and that is similar to every other institution in Ireland and many abroad and it talks to the discussion we were having on ... having earlier on with Senator D'Arcy in terms of what was happening internationally. On the asset side of the balance sheet, again EBS had built that €1.7 billion of land and development and commercial property financing, which was too much for an organisation its size. It also had a commercial buy-to-let portfolio of about €500 million or so on top of that. It had entered into the tracker mortgage marketplace, in fairness not to the extent of some other institutions, it had a buy-to-let business and profile. And so therefore the riskiness and the growth of the asset side of the balance sheet and the riskiness of it in the context of its components, was not suitable to a building society which should, at its very heart and ethos, be very conservative, prudential, given the fact that a building society, for example, can't raise capital in the same way as a bank can in the international markets and also the heritage and ethos and ownership. Being owned by members, you have a very special responsibility to stewardship the organisation in a conservative way.