Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Okay. Can I ... in your witness statement, Taoiseach, on page 6, you make reference to the excessively close relationship between the Central Bank and the Department of Finance at the time, and between the Financial Regulator and the institutions it was charged with regulating. My colleague, Joe Higgins, referred to it, affectionately as “Siamese twins”. And can you clarify in what way you regard the relationship between the Central Bank and the Department of Finance that have been excessively close? Would this have not been a normal situation to manage the economy and regulate the economy properly? And similarly with the Financial Regulator and the banks, how should such relationships be managed and how should they be objectively measured? So, you speak about this excessively close relationship between the Department of Finance and the Central Bank and then between the Financial Regulator and the institutions they were regulating. So, you might expand on that Taoiseach, what you mean.