of the German Financial Regulator told the Bundestag Finance Committee that the failure of the "terrible" Depfa Bank, which was completely supervised by the Irish Financial Regulator, lead to the collapse of its German parent which forced Berlin to bail it out at a cost of €102 billion. The committee was told that the alternative was a run on German banks and the eventual collapse of the European finance system and "You would have woken up on Monday morning in the film Apocalypse Now" The bank had just 319 employees but was allowed to guarantee loans valued at 14 times Ireland's Gross Domestic Product. A former Governor of the FR's parent, the Central Bank of Ireland, was a director of Depfa. Regulatory failure was acknowledged and this is a source of continuing friction with the German authorities. They had to admit that it had issued private warnings to over 30% of credit unions about their arrears levels, but refused to provide full updates on what percentage of credit union loans are in arrears or how quickly they are increasing. This raised questions about the Financial Regulator's commitment to openness. Transparency International have questioned whether the Financial Regulator should continue to have an exemption from Freedom of Information legislation. Compliance experts have said "The most offensive confidentiality provision in Ireland is the one which protects the Financial Regulator" Both the Financial Services Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, are among others, who called for a lifting of the confidentiality applied by the regulator to much of its work. Other EU regulators have a policy of transparency. In Autumn of the same year, they were severely criticised in a report marked "strictly confidential and not for publication", commissioned on how it operates,said they were poor value for money and had too few specialist staff, compared with its peers. There were also serious shortcomings in the crucial supervisory area. and the report was particularly critical of the regulator’s senior management structure, concluding that a clear management and oversight framework, which ensures that issues are escalated through the organisation, was "not fully in place". Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in a report in the Financial Times said that his decision in 2001 to create a new financial regulator was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Irish banking sector and "if I had a chance again I wouldn’t do it". "The banks were irresponsible,"