Professor Patrick Honohan:

There were warnings about solvency issues but there was no indication that they were going down for big amounts of negative capital. It is the negative capital that cost the State. That is why the €8.5 billion figure mentioned by David Doyle is important. He seemed to say the State could lose €8.5 billion but in my interpretation of what he said, and probably his interpretation, he did not think that. He simply felt that it was going to burn through €8.5 billion of the capital. It had €8.5 billion or something like that.