Professor Patrick Honohan:

My motivation for that was focused very much on the outflows that were happening around that time, in those previous days, and the sense of growing panic in the financial sector that the Irish situation was getting out of control. I wanted to say, "It's not out of control. There's discussions in place. The IMF are coming. They have lots of money. They're going to protect us." I know that, subsequently, there's been a lot of ... greater attention on the political dimension, which was not in my mind at all and ... so that's unfortunate. My focus was entirely on the financial stability issues and the credibility of the Central Bank in protecting the financial system and the State in that way.