Mr. Cormac McCarthy:

Senator it was actually, it was too long and let me explain if you'll forgive me, if I can explain the circumstances. Firstly our reply crossed, so our reply to that letter which has been submitted to the inquiry was sent out two days before that particular letter, so our letters crossed with the regulators. Yes it took too long, if I could explain why it took too long. Typically, what the regulator did in their inspections was they visited your institution, they did their work independent of discussion, there was limited enough discussion with management. Typically, they would take files away they would look at those files they would return those files, then they would finish their inspection, go back to the Central Bank or their own offices and write their report. It was a matter of continuing frustration that there wasn't on-the-ground discussion with management at the completion of their review. So typically, what would happen is, you'd expect there to be a dialogue that would say, "We found this, can you help us with that". That didn't happen and typically you got a letter and then we would have to spend quite a bit of time going back over the individual files that the regulator would have pulled to see exactly what the nature of the query was and if the documentation had been in place. And what the reply to the regulator that we issued on, I believe, 22 July, indicates is that in a number of cases we were able to say to the regulator, well actually this document was there or that had been done. So unfortunately, the process was elongated by the fact that there was very limited dialogue at the conclusion of a review and it resorted to paper. I do regret that it took as long as it did to respond but the reality was that we had to do a lot of work after we received the regulator's report to make sure we got a full response in.