Mr. Ian Drennan:

I have made it clear in previous correspondence that I am quite happy to come back before the committee. I have no problem with that.

On the question regarding Anglo, I answered it earlier but I note that at any given time, we are undertaking a number of investigations that are quite large in scale. I said earlier that were December 2008 to hit again and we were faced with what the people who were there at the time were faced with, we would not have the resources to deal with it. It was enormous and in all fairness to those people who were there at the time, they had no inkling at the outset as to the scale it ended up being. There were, regrettably, some serious failures but the people who were there at the time also deserve a lot of credit for the positive outcomes to which I alluded earlier. Significant work was done in bringing four other lines of investigation to successful prosecutions. Very few organisations in the State would be equipped to take on something of that sheer scale. We have learned to have a greater appreciation of the risks involved and how to go about mitigating them by trying to narrow the number and scope of investigations we take on, to supplement what we have internally with external expertise and a range of other avenues that need to be explored. In 2009, we were in the depths of the aftermath of a financial crisis and people at the time were cognisant that the Exchequer was under enormous pressure and it was a perfect storm in many respects when one considers what subsequently transpired.