Mr. Peter Nyberg:

It is not something that the commission looked at in extensobut, of course, it was looked at by Governor Honohan and by Regling and Watson, so I will put my own views then on the table as well. As Senator MacSharry may know, the euro and all currency unions require that individual countries adapt to the one and only central bank policy that there is. The ECB adapts its monetary policy to some sort of average of the whole Union. If it is not suitable for Ireland, or Finland, as it has not been, then one has to adapt domestically. There are, of course, numerous ways - fiscal policy, supervisory policies, effecting wage agreements and so forth - available to the domestic economy to adapt to a monetary policy or currency policy that is not suitable. I am not able to say why the ECB followed the kind of policy it did. However, we do know that neither the ECB, the EU, the IMF, or the OECD, nor a number of other international institutions, foresaw the global crisis that came. Indeed, in Europe, the strong growth in overseas bank lending was hailed as a victory for integration rather than a sign of increased risk on the banks' balance sheets. The EU and the ECB were no better or worse than a lot of other official institutions, which is in a way a rather pessimistic message for the future. As regards Germany's influence and so forth, I really would not know. If the committee gets representatives of the EU or the ECB here, it can ask them. However, I am not competent to answer that question.