Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet:

You have a very very important question of course, which is more general, because the question is asked to all governments the world over and particularly to all, I would say, advanced economies. Because we are speaking of a crisis of the advanced economies, which started in New York, as you know with the sub-prime and with Lehman Brothers. And that has happened everywhere and I fully agree with you. This speculation was totally unleashed, Ireland was very unfortunately a case in point as were, unfortunately, all financial markets in the world. Otherwise we wouldn't have this generalisation of the drama to all advanced economies of the world. So the question is absolutely right and absolutely good in all the advanced economies.

The only issue is, would have we been better off for our fellow citizens if we had had the Great Depression, '29 and '30 like? In which situation would have been our people if we would have had the Great Depression? In the opinion of, to my knowledge, all Governments without any exception they all considered that, it's not the Irish Government particularly, they all considered that it would have been much more dramatic and that it was good for us to avoid the dramatic Great Depression.

That is all of what I can say, but never again. I fully agree with you, never again.