Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thanks, Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Ahearne. On your appointment to the position of special adviser to the late Brian Lenihan in March '09, were you satisfied that the Minister and his officials were in possession of the management information that was necessary to make informed decisions such as the initial injection of capital of €4 billion into Anglo in May 2009? Was there recognition at that time by the Minister and officials that the data available to them was not as accurate as it could have been? And maybe you could put that in the context that we had PwC in before us this morning and Project Atlas ... one of the assumptions they took was that commercial property would only fall by 4% in value between '08 and 2011, when, in fact, property fell by over 60% during that time period. And, they were ... PwC were subsequently involved in doing work for the Department in around May '09, at which time you would have been in situ, where they agreed with that €4 billion that the new management in Anglo suggested was needed in terms of recapitalisation of Anglo.