Mr. John Moran:

At no time did we realise the scale and extent of bank lending that existed within the marketplace. If one looks at CSO forecasts, which I happen to have in front of me, the forecast for 2006 was 6% economic growth and the forecast for 2007 was 5%. The forecast was due to tail off in 2008 at 3% to 4% per annum. We took all our economic commentary from a variety of sources. We looked at ESRI reports. We looked at Central Bank reports. At no stage were what I would regard as the pillars of economic commentary, which would be Government-backed organisations or alternatively organisations such as the ratings agencies or otherwise, saying that we were about to witness the cataclysmic crash that we did. We were aware that there was a lot of credit in the marketplace, but it is the oft-used word, that there was an expectation to which I referred earlier, that there would be a soft landing, and that the soft landing would result in an adjustment of prices but never to the extent that actually happened.