Mr. Brian Cowen:

No, I don't accept that, not at all. I honestly don't accept that. I mean you ... the size of the problems that we ultimately had to deal with were huge, and there are some states who are trying to deal with them now and are not as advanced in their resolution as we are. But when you're there, you see what you do is, you have a successful industry, it has a good reputation and you're trying to develop that, so you go onto the next step. So, this modern legislation wasn't about,"Oh, let's sit on our laurels and just let's do a little legislative job." This was about saying where are the trends going, what ... where are these industries going in the future, how can Ireland continue to position itself in a competitive way? And there was nothing wrong with being competitive but it doesn't compromise ... and this is my basic point to you when you're hearing some of these arguments, it doesn't compromise, or undermine the primary function, which was to regulate effectively. There were adequate powers, there were obviously lessons to be learned as to why things weren't picked up and, you know, there are lessons that the Department of Finance has to learn. There's lessons that Ministers for Finance have to learn. There's lessons the Taoisigh have to learn. I'm not suggesting ... that there ... anyone is exempt from being scrutinised on all of this stuff but I don't accept that we were, sort of, sitting there, you know, not worrying what way it goes. The country, let's remember guys, the country was going pretty well ... it was going well, we had a lot of success. Now what happens is then when things change, you have to be flexible, you have to be ready and you have to be prepared to move in a different direction. And sometimes, unfortunately, that can involve you in some very unpopular decisions but they have to be taken in the interest of trying to rebuild and recover as quickly as we can.