Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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With respect, it is the scale of the Quinn Insurance Limited loans. There is no one here today from either the Central Bank or the Department who can tell us if anybody noticed any of this creeping up. If you are on the board of a small company, you would be watching the finances from month to month and your auditor would come in a couple of times a year. You would be in regular contact with your auditor. You would see the balance sheets at board meetings every month and you would see where things were slipping. What is alarming from the public's point of view is that we have a financial calamity in excess of €1.1 billion and nobody here is able to answer questions on it. Unfortunately, we do not have the Governor of the Central Bank or any of the three deputy governors with us to tell us when was this noticed, what action was taken at that point or if it was a wild-west scenario whereby people could carry on and do whatever they wanted. Was there an attitude that when it finally hit a brick wall, the taxpayer would step in and things would carry on as normal? Does Dr. O'Reardon see the point I am making?