Mr. Cormac McCarthy:

I am, Deputy. They encouraged us to try and join the guarantee. So the view at the time of my superiors in Royal Bank of Scotland was that, given we were a systemic bank in the Irish market ... and that the guarantee was arguably afforded for systemic institutions ... that it would be in our best interest and in the interests of the RBS group to try and avail of the guarantee, given that enormous stresses at the time in the UK banking system and in Royal Bank of Scotland. So ... the idea that one of your subsidiaries, a systemic bank in, say, Ireland could avail of a guarantee to prevent the outflow of deposits ... not to do anything else but to prevent it ... was obviously attractive. So my superiors would have encouraged me to try and participate in the guarantee.