Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, let me explain. I'm trying to explain the situation as best I can. The first thing we had to decide was what we were going to do. Now I take the point and it's a matter of regret to me - and a former colleague of mine has made this point in an essay in another place - that it would have been better for me to call a meeting ... even if I had to call a Cabinet meeting at six o'clock the next morning, it would have been better. I accept that. But my judgment on the night was that we had ... this thing had to be out by seven in the morning, we would talk to all our people incorporeally. They were all in different parts of the country; this was a Monday night. They had been up at a Cabinet meeting on Sunday and, probably, the thinking might have been, when I look back on it, that we may well have to consider making decisions some part of Tuesday or Wednesday you know what I mean. It was ... it moved that quick that we had to make the decisions Monday night. I just want to give a contemporary memory of what was going on and the context of what was going on. So ... and I'm sorry to colleagues if any of them feel that we should have had that meeting. It wasn't meant on my part to be ... not to have a meeting. I'd been very much a chairman rather than chief, for those who remember my chairing of Cabinets. But, anyway, the point is that we did have ... we had to make the decisions. These were the recommendations that were going to Cabinet. We did have ... we were already due to have a meeting the next morning anyway. We had that meeting and it was confirmed that this was what we had to do. I don't recall ... I don't want to get into what happened on at the Cabinet meeting but there was support for the position, put it that way.