Professor Alan Ahearne:

I do not think the really detailed information one would need to make a very good projection about how bad things were getting in the bank was available to anybody. I do not think the Financial Regulator had that information. The Financial Regulator's approach - so-called light-touch regulation - meant that regulation was not intrusive and the regulator did not gather the sort of information that one would really like to have. I mentioned talking to the late Brian Lenihan about really needing to know what the books looked like. That is the sort of stuff I was getting at.