Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I think, I suppose I cannot answer for the banks or for the regulator because I came from outside. I think it didn't take somebody like myself or my colleagues or the chairman and the board to arrive in and to see this after a month or two of looking at it or looking at the data to figure out there's something fundamentally structurally wrong here, how this was not seen. I mean, it is for others to answer about why they did not see it and, like all things, you can look to have the appearance of all the correct structures, but whether they are doing the right thing is it. Sometimes, you know, I'm a great believer in what people call the maverick. Somebody who asks you the questions you never thought of or not the groupthink question and saying well, "What about this, what about that." Just to think about things in an alternative way and I think there have been other contributors here from across the spectrum to this inquiry to date. Effectively, everybody thought there was going to be a soft landing. Everybody thought it was a temporary slow down and that the economy would get up and running again and that it would not be as bad as it was. Unfortunately, it turned out to be much worse than it was because I think it's key from the figures when anyone looks at them, they are publicly available if you take any of the reports from any of the banks from 2003 to 2008. The two main banks' balance sheets were €100 billion in 2003 each. They were €200 billion in 2008. Anglo Irish Bank was €25 billion in 2003, €100 billion in 2008. I mean, that was an explosive level of growth. Where was most of that lending going? Most of that lending was going to, effectively, the biggest component of the banks' books was commercial property lending.