Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Hold on a second; I want to finish the point. We would be at the point where sensible people would say that we must liquidate this thing the same way as I liquidated IBRC-Anglo. The only way to get out of this is liquidation. There is no point in bailing in to rescue something because it is dead.

When we go down the process, in my view the likelihood of direct recapitalisation being drawn down is well down the hierarchy. We will have a better idea when we see how the European banking system comes out of the stress tests, and we should have that information at the end of October when we will have a picture of the strengths of European banks. Since the stress tests were announced, banks throughout Europe have been raising core tier 1 capital on the private market and repairing their balance sheets, so it is likely that the results will be quite positive.