Mr. Justice John Hedigan:

When I was being interviewed finally for this post I was asked at the end if I had any questions. I said that I had only one question: "Who appoints the board?" Dame Colette Bowe replied: "You do, if you get the job". It was made clear to me that I was, effectively, going to design this old-new system. I had plenty of examples to look at. I went to London and met the people there to see what they did and what we could learn from them. I had been given a reasonably good steer in that we were calling our board an Irish banking culture board. This was a very different thing from an Irish banking standards board. Ireland had plenty of banking standards and regulations and it did not stop all of the trouble. It was a cultural thing, what was inside people's hearts and what people do when no one is looking, that was causing the trouble. Other than that, because it was set up as a banking culture board I had an open page to do whatever we wanted. I believe that what we have set up is the most effective way we can bring our influence to bear on the banks through the five banking members on the board interacting with the seven non-banking members, where we can raise all of the problems that arise in the industry today.