Mr. Brian Cowen:

Sorry. But, to answer ... I don't know why they called it that. I agree it's not a very ... it's not a very great name, but anyway. This was an administrative structure really, it wasn't a ... it wasn't an organisation that was set up by way of legal decision or anything. It was ... it came out of the Heads of State and Government meeting that was held under the Presidency of France by President Sarkozy on 3 October. And arising out of that, there was a strong feeling, obviously ... where every state was having to come up with solutions themselves, there was a need to try and improve the co-ordination. The co-ordination mechanisms were obviously not working very well because in a crisis, everyone is looking to their own situation and you're not going around talking about everyone else's problems when you have enough yourself. So this group was ... it was made up of representatives of the Presidency of, at the time, the six-month Presidency people, whoever they would be. In that case it was a French official, I presume. You know, a representative of the Presidency of the Commission, you'd have a representative of the Presidency of the ECB, you'd have member state reps, if they needed ... what would happen is, basically, this would ... you would activate this if you were ... if you were the member state ... let's take an example: if Ireland ... if this had been up and running, Ireland would be expected to make contact with these ... this group to continue ... to improve contingency planning, to make sure everyone was in the know ... that you could exchange information on a confidential basis. That would be an important part of it. And really it was about trying to strengthen what was not only the lack of co-ordination but maybe even the absence of co-ordination that was taking place as people were trying to deal with this financial crisis as it was affecting countries throughout Europe.