Mr. John McCarthy:

The Deputy is absolutely correct. The behaviour of the credit rating agencies, CRAs, was completely pro-cyclical. When everything was going great everything was triple A and when things changed, not just in Ireland but globally, it was vice versaonce the difficulties kicked in. It is important to remember that there have been a number of regulations adopted at European level aimed at reducing the dependence of sovereigns and others on credit rating agencies. That pro-cyclicality will hopefully be improved somewhat because that is in all our interests.