Professor Patrick Honohan:

Could I come back on a point? Deputy O'Donnell proposed a contradiction between two things I wrote and I checked them in case I might be surprised. I am glad to say there was no contradiction. All I said was that Anglo Irish Bank "would not be seen by most independent observers as systemically important". That is not the point. The point is that whether a bank is deemed systemically important is time dependent. A bank may be systemically important because of depositor runs in September 2008, however in spring 2009 the situation might be much more stable and one would have to focus on whether the bank is needed because it is helping the economy. Some people say Anglo Irish Bank was still systemically important in spring 2009 and its nationalisation in January was a systemic event which affected the world economy. There is literature on this. I do not think there was a contradiction. We do not want to undermine confidence in our work.