Mr. David McWilliams:

There are 14 examples of blanket guarantees given in bank crises around the world. The Irish guarantee is the third shortest. Can I explain that to the Deputy again? It is the third shortest. So it is as close to the minimum that has ever been given in the OECD and that involves Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkey. That is the first thing.

The second thing is what happened to our relationship. Nothing. Brian Lenihan and I always got on quite well. What happened was I kept saying to him:

Make it conditional. Make it conditional. Don't be open ended. Make it conditional. You are in the driving seat now. You own them. You are the boss. Make it conditional so that we are not in a situation where we end up paying off risk capital. You have to stop the crisis, which is absolutely essential. Once you have done that you are in the driving seat. You do what you want.

That was what the opportunity was. We could have done what we wanted. Napoleon said, "to govern is to choose". A Government has to make choices.