Professor Patrick Honohan:

It is helpful. Also, Deputy Fleming said the Government had grabbed all this. The Government grabs, but it gives back. It gives back in the services which otherwise have to be more squeezed and the benefits it pays. The Government organises how it does it, but it obviously goes back into the economy in one way or another.

On the profits of the Central Bank, first of all, from a quantitative perspective, we show in the annual report the value of the unrealised capital gains at that moment of the remaining assets in its portfolio. That was more than €9 billion. We had already made more than €1 billion on this IBRC portfolio since the liquidation. The sum of €1 billion and then some plus €9 billion is €10 billion and then some. However, the €9 billion is not in the bag. If interest rates were to go up again, the capital gain would be smaller. Gradually, we will recover some of it. I did the calculations the day before we published our annual report in preparation for this meeting. At that moment, when the interest rates were at their very lowest, the unrealised capital gain was €13 billion. One might say, "Wow", but that alerts one to the fact that it can move around a lot. We should not think the €9 billion is in the bag, but, still, things are going well on that front.

Is it really some clawback of part of the cost of IBRC? The answer is "Yes" and "No". There is a better way to think about it. When the Government put that promissory note into the IBRC, it was at the highest interest rate. It was a really high, bad interest rate time to do it. It was not quite the highest, but it was a bad interest rate time to do it. That is what happens. When in trouble, a high interest rate will have to be paid. What we have managed to achieve is, basically, to refinance - sorry, I should rephrase that because the Central Bank does other things. What the Government has managed to achieve is a refinancing of that cost at these extremely low interest rates. The capitalised value of that refinancing is the €9 billion or €10 billion sum. That is why it is so difficult, given that we are talking about many years and different financing schemes. Did IBRC still cost us €35 billion adding all the things together? Yes, but now it has been refinanced in such a way that, actually, the Government will only have to borrow maybe, in the end, €10 billion less, because the bond is there and the bond is now worth more.