Mr. Brian Cowen:

Yes, the Central Bank Governor, in his briefings to me, would mention these issues to me. He was the guy that was dealing with me there, because there were ... it was in the context of financial stability issues. And I've explained to you that when you look at lending growth, and I've explained it in my statement, that you look at lending growth in any year there was ... in fact, in one of the stability reports, a very interesting paper done - and I would say that in relation to these stability reports, which only began in 2004, prior to that they were incorporated in annual reports, that in fairness to the Central Bank and the regulator's office, there were always excellent and relevant papers attached to these reports by either their own staff or others in relation to certain issues. And on lending growth, they had one actually. And one of the things you have to remember is that the function of increasing lending growth is not just ... if you take it that prices are rising every year, year-on-year, plus you increase the numbers, the number of people who are getting mortgages increases, that dictates what your rate of growth is. And I think it's important to point out that the research paper that sets that out ... whilst is was higher, it was higher, we were coming from a position where we had low, believe it or not, even in EU comparative terms, low occupation of population in housing, we were coming through a social change where there was no longer any inter-generational living going on. People where you had one house would do as a family unit, was now three or four required, you get my point? So all of that social change, the question of different types of families and all that was funding ... that was fuelling the lending growth. But the issue that came up from the regulator was that he decided in 2007 to do something about that. It should have been sooner, in hindsight. But that was a statutory power that he had; I didn't have that statutory power.