Professor Alan Ahearne:

The numbers are the numbers. Anglo Irish Bank was recapitalised to the tune of €30 billion, as I have said. If I remember rightly, it had, on the night of the guarantee, about €50 billion of deposits and about €10 billion of senior bonds. Again, I am talking a hypothesis or a counterfactual scenario. If one considers the counterfactual scenario in which the Government says it is not going to put a cent into Anglo, the €30 billion of losses that the State covered would have fallen on its creditors. Then, one had €60 billion of senior creditors - €50 billion in deposits and the €10 billion - and one would have discounted them by 50%, which is the number I gave earlier. That measure would have saved the State €30 billion, if that is what the Deputy asked. On the other hand, one is talking about depositors, small businesses and individuals with their life savings getting back 50 cent in the euro. That means that if an elderly person had €200,000 saved with Anglo Irish Bank, he or she would have got €100,000 back. If one were a small or medium-sized enterprise with the wages for the next few months on deposit then one would have got half of them back.