Professor Patrick Honohan:

Then it would have to work it down. As I have pointed out today, it would have still ended up with the bulk of the losses but they would have been reduced by the fact that the subordinated debt and the old debt would not have been guaranteed. There was a considerable amount of old debt which was not due to mature for some months or even years and could have been bailed in subsequently. We know how difficult the bail-in debate subsequently became in 2010 when we had our backs to the wall but we might have been the leaders in designing bail-in mechanisms, which we now have in Europe, if we had done it from a strong position when we were still a triple A country.