Hi Gregory and thanks, I should have been clearer, I don't want an instance of the class I need its type , what I need to do is get a List(T) from a Generic(T) class , the generic class expects a class of type IMyInterFace to create and populate a List(T) I show a code snippet below

I create it like this at the moment

if(some condition)
    XLToList(MyClass) xlist = new XLToList(MyClass)();
else
    XLToList(MyOtherClass) xlist2 = new XLToList(MyOtherClass)();


public class XlToList(T) where T : ITariffDataImport, new()
    {
        public delegate void Notify(object sender, CSVEventargs e);
        public delegate void NotifyEveryRecord(int RecordNumber);
        public event Notify OnFinishedProcessing;
        public event Notify OnFoundBadTariff;
        public event Notify OnFoundStartingRow;
        public event NotifyEveryRecord OnProcessingRecords;


        private Type thistype = typeof(T);

        private List(T) data;

        public List(T) Data
        {
            get
            {
                return data;
            }
            set
            {
                data = value;
            }
        }

and the class uses T to create types and class instances etc... any clearer ? ( sorry I've used parentheses instead of angle brackets because of the UT limitations.)

Thanks again Greg