taxpayer €451 million. As leverage for the Anglo share purchase was provided by Anglo, this coordinated action would have constituted market abuse. Ross was also a trenchant critic of the under-performance of the Irish Pension Funds, and contrasted their performance with the SVM Global's Saltire Fund, the hedge fund which he chaired; however, in 2013, the Saltire Fund revealed a large loss of 32.4% during a period in which global stock markets had gained 17.7%. Campaigning and political activism In the aftermath of the voters' rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in its first referendum in June 2008, in spite of support for the treaty by the major political parties, Ross highlighted the "disconnect" between the ruling caste of the nation's politicians and the democratic will of the public. In January 2009, he took the Central Bank of Ireland and Ernst & Young to task for their failings leading up to the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank. In his capacity as Senator, Ross pressed Allied Irish Bank executives on the bank's fraudulent offshore dealings involving subsidiaries and Caribbean front operations, charging that the only party to be disciplined in the affair was the whistleblower who brought it to light and forcing from the bank's CEO Eugene Sheehy, the admission that the institution may have been in breach of the Companies Act. He authored an account of the Irish financial crisis later that year – The Bankers: How the banks brought Ireland to its knees. In October of that year Ross drew the ire of the public transport company CIÉ for publicising charges of widescale fraud and mismanagement within the semi-state organisation. He has criticised government inaction in voicing concerns about the Sellafield nuclear plant, and has called for stronger legal protection for whistleblowers in cases of fraud and corruption. For his investigation into waste at the state training agency FÁS pursuant to the FÁS expenses scandal, Ross was recognised by his peers as the 2009 Journalist of the Year. Ross is frequently featured as a source by international news media, and has been cited as "one of Ireland's foremost financial commentators" by the Associated Press. Dáil Éireann On 15 January 2011, during the course of a television interview, Ross announced that he would stand in the Dublin South constituency at the next general election, which at that date had not been announced but was expected very soon. He had refused an