Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, that view was given by people who were interfacing with them in certain respects.

The only comment I'd make from a policy point of view is that, you know, we had rules-based more interventionist type regulation, for example, in Spain, and we still had a housing crisis and we had a problem. So it comes down to, basically, people spotting where the risks are. And the whole problem about this crisis has been a misjudgment of risk - people not recognising that risks were building and problems existed.

Now on the IFSC, I would like to point that again the Central Bank did a sort of an exercise, in one of their reports, I think it was the 2005 financial stability report, it made the point that the IFSC was not ... I think only 3% of lending was done by the IFSC banks in terms of how the Irish economy worked. All that problem was in the retail banks. And I think it's important to point out that, when there was criticism at the time of the setting up of the IFSC, there was people trying to suggest that it was all a funny money and it was all a haven and all the rest of it. I mean, the problem arose in Ireland in Main Street; it didn't happen in the IFSC, it happened in our own retail banks and we have to take cognisance of that.