Mr. Eugene Sheehy:

Yes, Chairman. I fully agree with my colleague that in the middle of '05 the outlook and the condition of the bank was very positive and that continued, in my view, for a number ... a couple ... of years after that. It was only when the market began to unravel, both internationally ... one way I look at it is, there was an international context, there was a national context, and there was an institution specific context. And, all three of those dimensions changed for the worst in ... from the middle of late 2007 onwards. There were reasons for it and I'll only address the institution specific ones. Obviously, everybody is familiar with the context as you had in the Context Phase.

When the market turned negative we were ... we found ourselves overexposed in property in the Republic of Ireland and specifically certain types of property in the Republic of Ireland. Our expectations as to how those assets would behave in a downturn didn't pan out. The stress tests we relied upon, while there were one in 25 year stress tests weren't equipped for a one in a hundred year stress, and as a consequence post-2009 as the market continued to display very severe write-downs, the bank's capital position became compromised and it required support from the State. Earlier of course, it had got support in relation to the guarantee, so that would be my explanation of how it came to be.