Professor Patrick Honohan:

Money is an entry in accounts. Those accounts can be created by the European Central Bank, which is the monetary authority of Europe. It created it on the basis of making loans on secure collateral. It allows the Central Bank of Ireland to make enormous exceptional loans against securities that the ECB would not normally accept. We have had to go out on a limb to meet that. Therefore when that can be repaid, the currency does not exist.