Mr. John Hurley:

Because it goes back to the earlier discussion about the efficacy of emergency liquidity assistance, about the stigma attached to emergency liquidity assistance at the time. Now, there would not have been such a stigma in a normal crisis. It is just that if you have a systemic crisis emanating from the United States in the way it did with the destruction of confidence in banks, emergency liquidity is the signal that markets take fright at and in our situation the judgment - yes, this happened in Northern Rock - so the judgment that had to be made is what's the impact of this. If more and more emergency liquidity were required for Anglo Irish Bank over that week - and sentiment had been running very heavily against Anglo Irish Bank, which produced the liquidity problem on that particular day - if that had been necessary, what is the sentiment effect of that on the market? What does it do for the guarantee?

The judgment - and I was central to this judgment - the judgment was that a further liquidity assistance had to be given to Anglo Irish Bank, in the context of the guarantee, which they now had, what did that say about the guarantee and the other banks and would that damage the guarantee for the pillar banks? And the judgment on the night - and I was central to this judgment - was I believed it would and I believed, therefore, a back-stop was necessary. The back-stop was to get to the weekend so as that other decisions could be made. There was no decision to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank that night, nor was there any decision to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank at the weekend. But it was my view-----