Mr. Bertie Ahern:

Of the few meetings that were held before and after that, he did not bother to attend. The blame is clearly on the other side. What is regrettable now is the change that has happened in this regard. For the 11 years I dealt with Tony Blair's Government, and even during Gordon Brown's Government, there was a very strong group of officials dealing with Irish issues; not just the peace process but all Irish issues. To the best of my knowledge, and the committee members probably know this better than I do, there is now one person dealing with all of that.