Professor Alan Ahearne:

No, we did not use those terms. We were talking about the property market and we may have got on to Anglo and Irish Nationwide because those were the two most exposed to the property market. I must say I did not know much about Irish Nationwide. I remember him saying that this bank was extremely exposed, or something along those lines, and that was news to me. I knew very little about that bank. I had known anecdotally that Anglo was very exposed.

On that discussion, he mentioned that Anglo was highly exposed and therefore troubled but that it also had some good stuff. He said something like that, which surprised me because all the rumours I was hearing at the time was that it was a complete basket case, but he mentioned that. He may well have been talking about the fact that it had some properties in New York or London, or some in Dublin. He did not have any such comments about Irish Nationwide. He seemed to think that it was even worse.