Mr. Tom Considine:

The IFSC was part of ... we would have seen it ... two dimensions to it. It was part of the economy and, as such, we would have been anxious to develop it, make it a significant contributor to employment and growth. That's ... now, side by side with that, we would have certainly seen that an essential element of that was sound regulation, because if we got a bad name of, you know, running the thing loosely, it couldn't but do us harm. So that's the way we looked at it.

Now, when it comes to legislation and the Financial Regulator, the legislation is actually very specific. If you take, you know, the specific ... I saw Mr. Patterson giving evidence there, and the actual format of the strategy was set out in legislation. So it wasn't just, you know, that the legislation didn't just say, "You should produce a strategy statement." The legislation said, "You should produce a strategy statement with A, B, C, D and E in it." And our job was to make sure that that was done.

The next thing that happened was that that strategy statement had to be submitted to the Minister and then placed before both Houses of the Oireachtas, and it was open to scrutiny. I don't know to what extent that happened, but I know they were up before some committees. Then following that then there was a requirement for an annual report. And the same thing happened there. They were required to report on what was in the strategy statement and that, again, went to the Minister.