Mr. Michael Walsh:

Chairman, yes, thank you and thank you, members. You know, just to reiterate, I do deeply regret the events that occurred and their impact on Ireland but I think the purpose of this committee is for you to actually consider what to do going forward. Key groups in Ireland saw the problems or foresaw the problems that were coming about. The stress tests in the Central Bank, you had the NTMA expressing views, even Irish Nationwide was expressing a view in December '07. The domestic standing group started working in January 2008 to actually generate solutions, possible solutions, etc. But as everybody here now knows, we ended up in September 2008 without really a clear view of where we were actually going. And I think, Chairman, you've got to consider what would have happened if we avoided the growth that took place in 2007, even if we only saw the problems at the end of 2006.

As a minimum, there'd have been €70 billion less money lent into the Irish market. I think there was about 100,000 additional mortgages taken out, so additional families actually probably in negative equity today. Given the results of the stress tests, you would have required every institution, or should have required every institution, to get more capital. I think you've heard from the former Attorney General, there was no bank resolution legislation actually in place. That could have been put in place. It could have helped Europe in place, whatever. Now, who knows if that action had been taken at the end of 2006 how much less damage could have been done? And I think that in terms of your recommendations, what you have to think about is how do you actually remove the silo mentality that exists. I think one of your witnesses said we weren't prepared to share information until September - it took the Reuters story. I have no idea what the correct solution is but you have to recognise that there would be a very different situation if, at the end of 2006, you had brought together the key players in the public sector and the private sector and actually tried to find out what was the best thing to do for the country.

So I think, in terms of you framing your views, your recommendations, you have to think about that. I said I deeply regret I didn't see the problems much earlier. If I had, hopefully, I would have taken the right decisions earlier but I didn't. I apologise unreservedly for that but I think if we want to avoid the same problems occurring again, you've got to think about how you actually avoid that, sort of, silo-type thinking. Thank you.