Mr. John Hurley:

This was a very serious situation ... I wouldn't be able to ... I hope I've conveyed in some way the extraordinary situation that the country found itself in. There are all sorts of arguments of why it shouldn't have been there but this was the situation that the Government faced and the choices were very, very limited. And if they didn't take a decision to actually manage the situation at that time, I said earlier that I thought our financial system would have come down with extraordinary implications for the country, not just for a week or a few days but for years. Now, that was, you know ... that was a very, very traumatic moment, it was a sobering moment but that was the issue that was being considered in the room at the time. It wasn't pleasant .... it was pleasant for no one in the room but the scale of the implications for this country was truly extraordinary. I've been a public servant for 46 years, I've headed up a number of different Ministries, I thought I had seen every sort of crisis ... I have never seen a crisis like this.