Mr. Fergal O'Leary:

To take the Senator's first question, in October 2015, we wrote to Insurance Ireland. The response that we got meant that we did not open a formal investigation at that stage - we did not have grounds to do so - but what we did from that point onwards was keep a watching brief to monitor what was being said by the industry. Over the course of the summer, the statements that came out concerned us more. That happened in May, June, July and August, and as I had said to the clerk to the committee a few weeks ago, we were down to appear before the committee last week but we were getting ready to issue those summonses and we did not want to appear before the committee and be even more restricted than we are today. At least the fact now that our summonses and our action is out in the public domain places responsibilities on those who have received those summonses.

Going back to October 2015, that is when we started looking at this, and we have been looking at it since, but it clearly escalated as things happened in the market over the past number of months.