Professor Patrick Honohan:

That is a very good point. I thank the Deputy for correcting me because I should have made that point, and I suppose we teased it out to some extent with Deputy O'Donnell. It was not the guarantee. It was the banks getting into this mess because it was never going to be possible for the Irish Government to say, "There are a lot of losses in the banks but we do not care because something had to be done for at least some of the banks".