Mr. Jim Breslin:

I am not seeking to identify anybody and neither am I aware of the detail. What I am trying to present here is that we were heading into a court case where the plaintiffs would have argued that the State was in breach of its contract. There would have been a discovery process attaching to that, to the extent to which the plaintiffs were going to introduce evidence into the court. The same would have applied to the other side. The other side would have been told what the State knew and would have had to defend its obligations under the contract. It was not as if it was an entirely secretive process in which it was not obvious to people that both sides of that argument were going to be played out across the court. I acknowledge this is unusual and I want people to understand, including people who are employed in the health service, that I recognise it to be unusual. The circumstances that we found ourselves in, where we were starting off with a €700 million exposure, were highly unusual as well. In the context of some of the other coverage that was done over the period, including, for example, the "Prime Time" programme, it was not unprecedented either.