Mr. Alan Dukes:

I honestly don't know and, in fact, that came to our knowledge because the Department inadvertently released to us a document which was prepared for some official who was making a statement about the whole thing and this was a kind of a prompt sheet for dealing with questions and answers and it included the point that the Department, of course, had not supported the May 2010 plan that we had put together. The Department were very embarrassed by that and they, they decided to take that piece out of the document but it had already been said. But it was a difficult time. When we had to do the second restructuring plan, and I don't know why the Commission turned down the first one, we were never told the full detail of that, during the second one, it took quite a long time for us to get engagement from the Central Bank and the Department in doing the plan, and the NTMA.

At a very late stage in putting that plan together, the Central Bank came along with another twist which was difficult to include in the plan but from recollection, I think it's ... I've referred to it in the statement ... there was only one occasion when anybody from the bank was involved in any engagement with the European Commission about the restructuring plan. I found out subsequently, in conversation with a senior Commission official, that other countries that were presenting restructuring plans for their banks brought the banks along to the discussion with the Commission. Personally, I think it would have helped us ... second ... certainly, the second time around and, clearly, the third time around if we had been involved in the discussion with the Commission so that we knew what kind of expectation they had in terms of restructuring.