Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well I understand that the negative news report from Reuters was exaggerating, wasn't accurate, in relation to Irish Nationwide. As I understand it, they got Goldman Sachs to come in and do some work for them. And ultimately the regulator got Goldman Sachs to do work for Irish, for the regulator, when they were inside at Irish Nationwide. They looked at the top 30 loans in Ireland and in the UK and decided that there was value there over a period of time but obviously there were some problems. But not to the extent that the Reuters were saying, that they were insolvent; they weren't insolvent at that point, or at any point that I know of, up to then. And when we got the €100,000 deposit guarantee scheme in place, a lot of the deposits in Irish Nationwide were in respect of small depositors like that who left their money in and the flow that was coming out of Irish Nationwide stopped as a result of the deposit guarantee. It probably benefited them more than anyone else because there was a higher percentage profile of depositors in the small category, if you like, of under €100,000 than would have been the case with other ones. So, that's the first point.

The second point is, these agencies ... credit rating agencies and international news organisations who are close to the financial situations often have an influence that can be very detrimental to any institution, particularly a small institution like Irish Nationwide. But to answer the point about it coming to public notice if it was ... any notice that came to the authorities in respect of any institutions that were in trouble under the regulatory regime we had would deal with that, if you like, with the constructive ambiguity that the Chairman was talking about before. In other words, if you're out there transparent on something, if there's a problem it can be ... it can roll into a bigger problem than it actually is and you cause an insolvency when in fact it was a liquidity problem to start with. It's ... these financial issues, as you know, have to be dealt with with discretion. It doesn't mean that you're trying to hide things that people should otherwise know. It's a question of trying to manage it without it becoming a wider problem or bringing others into it that weren't in the trouble in the first place.