Mr. Alan Dukes:

No, frankly. We found, as I ... that note that you referred to in the beginning, that was a note I prepared for my own guidance in chairing the meeting with Mr. Moran in May of 2011. It set out areas where I felt that the interaction between the bank and the Department was not producing the kind of result that it might have. For example, I think we were more aggressive ... we were more constructive about restructuring Arnotts, for example, than the Department would have been and we consulted them about that because that was an area that we thought might be an area of public interest ... you know, an iconic department store in a sensitive part of Dublin ... you know, there might be considerations to be taken into account but NTMA was nervous about the kind of deal we were doing. And the same, there was another deal ... a Champion deal, which NTMA was nervous about but which we went ahead with because it was our commercial judgment that that was in the best interests of the bank. And if you see on the section directly above that ... "Anglo board has real concerns about liability issues". That goes to the heart of the way the relationship worked. I felt at that time that we had to make it clear that the ultimate responsibility for what happened in the bank rested with the board and not with the NTMA or the Department of Finance and that it was the board's necks that were on the line for decisions that were made and we couldn't legally or prudently leave too many of those decisions to be made by other people, whose concerns were not, maybe, as informed by the realities of commercial life as ours were. We found, from time to time, in discussions with the Department, that they raised questions, which was a legitimate thing to do, but some of the questions were extremely naive. And as I said earlier on, we were never entirely sure just how far up in the Department the responses percolated and we found, from time to time, that it seemed to be difficult to come to a conclusion on an issue with the Department. The Department would raise a series of questions, legitimately, about a particular set of activities or whatever. We would sit down with them, explain it all, go through it all and they would ... we'd end the meeting and it would appear that that was concluded. And, a couple of months later, they would come back to us with the same set of questions, so it seemed to be difficult to be sure that we had concluded on an issue with the Department. I could go further about particular issues that I'm not allowed speak about here-----