Professor Gregory Connor:

Certainly. The other aspect was that much of the €136 billion in liquidity support was made during 2009.

As the banks could not roll over their bond funding, they turned it into liquidity support from the Irish and European Central Banks. They then realised this liquidity support was risky capital. They had a Government guarantee but that was no longer good enough. Now providing funding to the Irish Government was risky capital, meaning the backstop for liquidity support was also risky. It was like someone who had a mortgage but who lost their job and their backstop - their parents - also lost their jobs. Liquidity funding was provided to risky banks, backed up by a risky government. That was a lot of the reason the ECB wanted Ireland into the troika bailout programme. It wanted its support to turn into liquidity support and not become a risky position.