Ms Mary Harney:

Well, I think it's fair to say that the Central Bank and the Department of Finance were against any, certainly ... the greenfield option ... and then the ... I was keen to ensure that we'd better regulation, that we'd more proactive regulation and that we'd a single regulator. As I said, the Department of enterprise was responsible for insurance and credit unions and I didn't believe that that was satisfactory. We neither had the expertise nor the resources to do that. And added to that were the inquiries and then the charges, the hidden charges, the fact that the banks were misselling products to their customers and so on. So a process was put in place, chaired by Michael McDowell, senior counsel, I think there were nine members of it ... including representatives of various Government Departments, a lawyer and a number of other outside people. And they favoured, by a majority, a greenfield site.

And in the intervening period between reporting and the time the joint memo was brought to Government there were lot of discussions back and forth between my Department, both at official level and a political level, in relation to a solution or an agreement. And because the request was for the Governor to be able to give directions when anything to do with financial stability was involved, I was happy to agree with that obviously. The Government had its own responsibilities. We then came forward with a joint memo which is roughly around the two pillar approach, I think the secretary to the Government, Dermot McCarthy, was very involved in that mechanism too on behalf of the Department of the Taoiseach.

So we came forward with the two-pillar approach, under the auspices of the Central Bank. And after the legislation was passed I wasn't involved any more in ... I had no further role. If memory serves me right, I think the Secretary General of the Department of Finance may have sat on that overarching body and the authority would have reported in, both to the Department of Finance and to the, perhaps to the Oireachtas as well, I think.

But I think I said earlier, in response to Deputy Phelan, regulatory change alone, or sorry structural change alone doesn't change the culture. Now there were regulatory deficiencies at European level which have been since addressed, given we were in a monetary union. They didn't exist until relatively recently. But there's no doubt that the culture was one of deference. And although I want to emphasise the first responsibility is with the banks and thereafter their accountants, the regulator or the Central Bank are down the line from that. But I think there was neither sufficient resources applied to regulation to just have as ... as Governor Honohan, or Mr. Honohan, said in his report, I think he said there were two people responsible for each of the bigger institutions. There's no way that's possibly, that that could possibly be adequate, dealing with a very complex industry.