Mr. John Gormley:

No ... it was an unusual situation and it accelerated, obviously. I did not know, to answer your question directly, that there was going to be a meeting with the bankers the next day. I wasn't informed about that. But I did know that Minister Lenihan was thinking about these matters. I did discuss the issue with him. I was across the issue in the days preceding that. I think it would have been helpful but I mean, the fact is that Finance, the way they operate anyway - and I've been critical sometimes of the way the Department operates - that they often don't give you prior knowledge of what's going to be discussed. Whereas a Minister, if you are preparing a proposal, you have to go through all sorts of hoops. You know, you have to do a RIA, a regularly impact analysis, etc. The same laws don't apply to Finance. Very often, they would come to Cabinet and just put down a proposal a few minutes beforehand, which I found, frankly, unsatisfactory on occasion. But, no, were we passengers? No. Did things accelerate? Certainly. And I felt, as I said to Deputy McGrath, that, unfortunately, we were misled on the whole question of solvency.