Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No, that's fine, that's fine. No, that's clear. Mr. Rabbitte, and finally on this here, you were a member of the DIRT inquiry committee. And one of the findings was the undue close relationship between the State apparatus - in the form of the Department of Finance and the Central Bank - and the Irish financial institutions. We have it from the DIRT report, it's on page 52, but I quote from it, just it says:

There was a particularly close and inappropriate relationship between banking and the State and its Agencies. The evidence suggests that the State and its Agencies were perhaps too mindful of the concerns of the banks, and too attentive to their pleas and lobbying.

Now, I put that out there ... as a former member of the DIRT inquiry, which did, to a lot of people's minds, a lot of good work ... we're sitting here in another inquiry, the findings of the inquiry that you were at seems to be some of the things that we're investigating into just a number of years later. So, in your opinion, did the establishment of the Financial Regulator's office in 2003 address the concerns raised by the DIRT inquiry in their recommendations and, if not, why do you think they were ignored?