Mr. Michael McGrath:

The short answer is the State does. It is the Central Bank that looks at that. There are very strict rules at a European level under the solvency directives. The Central Bank looks at it to ensure there is a sufficient amount of capital. As we know from insurance, you write and make a commitment for something that will happen in the future, and take in a very small fraction today, but if something does happen there is then a large payout. The Central Bank actively supervises and regulates all the insurance companies that are both here and selling into here in terms of that issue.

Quinn was quite an exceptional case but there have been a couple of other failures of a smaller amount in terms of Setanta-----