Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet:

In September 2008 we had the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and we had again a problem, which was not an Irish problem at all, it was the house of cards of global finance which was collapsing. And after a sequence of events that were not on this side of the Atlantic, but were on the other side of the Atlantic, you had Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac and Fannie May, Lehman Brothers, after Lehman Brothers, AIG; you name it. This was the sequence of drama that we were observing. And we had at the level of the major central banks of the world to cope with that in a few half days and, as you might remember, it was on the Thursday following the Monday of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that we decided to provide liquidity on a global basis through swaps that we had with the FED and the other central banks in order to be sure that all banks all over the world would have normal access to liquidity, even if they had no collateral in dollars, but collateral in the local currency. So that is the situation in September '08.

I would say the ... Ireland was one of all the advanced economies, one of course of the 15 I already mentioned in Europe, and we had the same, I would say, message for all, "We are in the worst crisis since World War II, make no mistake, it is exactly the situation, it is absolutely dramatic, you have to take that into account. On our side we are doing all that we can on the liquidity basis, you are responsible, your governments, for the solvency basis." No different message for Ireland than for any for any other country at the time. And they were all, I have to say, in a dramatic situation.