Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well ... I'd like to say two things about that. First of all, I think he was not correct in saying that the ELA was going to grow up out of all, all proportion.

In fact, by that stage, I was presenting projections of ELA which proved to be - and the total access of the banks ... of the Central Bank proved to be reasonably accurate, as these things go. And it wasn't ... you know, it couldn't blow out indefinitely, but it does reflect the concern had been there since September, that the Irish ELA was growing and where was it going to go? So they had no perception.

Now, if the access to the programme had been deferred, what would the consequence have been? Well, I'd like to put it this way, I think the need for a programme could've been avoided if the ECB had decided - which I think they would consider themselves not wanting to do - if they had decided to say, "It doesn't matter, we will fund the Irish banks. Don't you worry about the Irish banks, we trust the Irish State", then the programme might not have been necessary because the markets might've said, "Well, that's all right then. The banks are going to be okay, so there won't be any run on the banks", and the markets are saying, "Yes, we'll lend to the Irish Government; it's going to cost them though. It's going to cost them 7%, 8%, 9%." So the Irish Government could probably have staggered on and staggered through the crises of 2011 and 2012, when the rates of interest would've been ever higher and higher and now we would be saddled with much higher debt servicing costs. So, actually, although the ECB, in a way, by saying ... by refusing to give an open-ended guarantee that the banks would be funded, it actually, inadvertently, did us a favour by allowing the State to go right through those difficult euro crisis years of 2011 and 2012 with the protection of official funding at low interest rates.