Mr. David McWilliams:

I would like to say of the then Minister that he was very discreet when he met me. He was very professional. He never gave me indications that anything was being decided. He more or less wanted to use me as a sounding board rather than anything else. He did not have to explain a partial guarantee. What it means is that if it is €50,000 or €100,000, the state will be behind it. I said to him that that was all very well if the bank run was Irish people going to ATMs, but the bank run would be the billions of euro of hot money being traded on international financial markets. What they would look at in the context of a partial guarantee was if all of the denials up until then had been wrong and that would spook them even more. I have worked on financial markets and seen how they work.