Mr. Michael Walsh:

I accept actually ... I think Mr. McWilliams was probably one of the few commentators who at that point in time had a view. But, you know, being realistic, that view wasn't one that was shared by most other people. I think it was Professor Honohan who said, "You will always have mavericks. We should listen to mavericks more often, but in practical terms we don't."

I would love to have seen the problems earlier. The reality is we did not see the problems until 2007, but when we saw the problems we actually took action. We went to the regulator, or I went to the regulator, told them what was happening, told them that things needed to be changed. Now the reality is in 2006 - and you've heard from Professor Honohan in his report - there were stability tests done as part of the round-table discussions. And what wasn't disclosed in those stability tests, which is actually in his report, that under the stress test No. 2, 88% of the Irish system collapsed. Now if 88% of the system actually collapses and you don't actually feel as a central bank or regulator that you have a problem on your hands and you need to communicate that to people, then the problem is there.

Now I have tried for the benefit of this committee to actually get more information in relation to those stress tests, because those stress tests are actually terribly important. They are done at a point in time when we'd been coming out of a very positive period. There were no warning signs in terms of overall problems in the domestic economy, in the global economy. So if action had been taken when those signs were there under those stress tests, the country would have been much better off today. The society would have been able to unwind its loan book because of the very short duration.