Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet:

I again have to go back to what we already said. In 2010 it seems to me that there was a broad consensus that burden sharing, this kind of burning of senior debt, was a very unwise course of action. The Irish authorities considered that it was an unwise course of action, but I can refer to the way all other Europeans were looking at it and the way , I would say, the way the international communities - of the advanced economies, on the other side of the Atlantic, everywhere - were considering. So, again, it's very ... all this is very complex. The guarantee was the initiative of the Government of Ireland without pre-discussion with anybody ... surprising other governments which, for most of them, embarked only on what I have called a blanket political guarantee. That's for one. So an initiative of the Government of Ireland, which was not at all a global consensus or a European consensus.

For the particular problem of the burden sharing, in '10 there was a consensus, it seems to me ... very clear. Later, in 2011 there were discussions on this particular point. I have to say that the overall risk of a new round of financial instability at the moment where the main goal of Ireland was to regain creditworthiness, to get back the investors and savers instead of having them putting their money out, was, in my understanding, justifying the decision which was taken. As far as we were concerned, we had put 100% of the GDP of Ireland to help support Ireland and all the entities in Ireland.