Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Chair, again, you know, as I've said a couple of times, I think the Honohan report and the Nyberg report addressed this much better than I could. What I can talk about is, you know, where the IMF has publicly acknowledged its own failings in this regard. And, you know, here I talked about this a little bit but I can give you a specific example. You know, even when the IMF staff identified some of the relevant risks, they did not provide a clear message about the need to address financial sector risks. This problem of mixed messages was very evident in our 2006 health check of Ireland's financial sector under the financial sector assessment programme, or FSAP for short. For example, the July 2006 IMF FSAP report said, "Irish banks' exposure to capital market funding at 30% of assets is amongst the highest in the EU." And it went on to point out that such funding is more sensitive to confidence than deposits and therefore is a less stable source of funding in times of stress. The report also highlighted risks to the Irish financial system arising from exposure to an overheated property market. But having pointed these things out, the IMF has been on record saying that the bottom-line conclusion - actually, it was really the top-line conclusion, because it was on page 1 of the report - was that, and again I quote, "The outlook for the financial system is positive, with financial institutions having sufficient cushions to cover a range of shocks and fighting the diversification of wholesale funding as a source of strength." So it should be no surprise that the IMF failed as well in this regard. So ... so I think this has been acknowledged in various IMF documents. So this was not just a failure in Ireland.