Professor Alan Ahearne:

"Let go" is a loose term, and I should have been a bit tighter in that regard. I think the talk at the time was that the Government was going to put capital into Anglo, which was going to continue running as a functioning bank. We were going to have Bank of Ireland, AIB and Anglo Irish Bank and they were just going to continue. What I was not convinced about was whether Anglo Irish Bank really had a future in the sense that it was a monoline bank. Where was it going to make its money in the future? Running Anglo Irish Bank as a going concern into the indefinite future was the part I was unconvinced about. That was different from saying it should have been shut down there and then, because that was not possible in the sense that Anglo was a very big bank with €70 billion or €80 billion of funding. If one shut it down there and then, one would have to pay back all the guaranteed funders because it was covered in the guarantee. Where would the State get €80 billion to repay them all?