Professor Patrick Honohan:

On the Wednesday night. So he was very cross. You know, "Why are they trying to rush me? What's this?" So he was very cross. There was no talking to him. So I went back into the meeting, my tail between my legs, and I wondered what was going to happen next. And I started to worry that I wasn't doing enough, that there was a sense of panic - both in the official circles but especially in the market, and they had these outflows - and I thought, "I should be doing something." And I ... somebody sent me a copy of the Financial Times' leader article, which was saying Ireland should be preparing for a bank run, and I'm sitting down here doing nothing? And the leader in the Financial Timessays Ireland should be preparing for a bank run when I should be doing something, if I should be preparing for a bank run. So I thought maybe ... maybe if I could say on the radio, "Look, we have loads of money, central banks, we can provide money to these banks, you don't need to be taking your money out, your money is perfectly safe." So I took the opportunity in ... not in a meeting but just in a corridor, to ask the relevant senior people, "Will you contradict me if I say the ECB will ... "Don't worry, ECB will give unlimited money." Because then I would be armed with a statement that I could make.

Now, let me backtrack that a week before, actually more like two weeks before, when there were ... outflows were starting to build up, one evening - among many conversations - one evening Brian Lenihan phoned me, I was just outside the Luas on Stephen's Green and he said, "Look, we're hearing from this part of the country and that part of the country that there are outflows. You should make a statement." And I said, "Well, I don't think that's a good idea, because I've no ... I can't just say, "Don't worry, everything will be all right", I have to have some story, I have to have some explanation, justification for this." He said, "Well, look, I'll leave it to you, I bow to your ...". So what did the ECB people say? They said, "We will contradict you, because we cannot give an open-ended guarantee." So I spent the night thinking about what I should do and I decided that, first of all, that time was of the essence, market movements very, very ... you know, once you lose the confidence of the markets it can take a long time to get it back. So I thought, "Now, you must act now." And I thought I'd probably be able to convince people that the Central Bank is going to provide their money, even if I don't give a promise that the ECB ... and I think if you look at the wording of the statement ... of the interview that I gave on "Morning Ireland" you'll see I went very, very close to saying that the ECB would provide all the finances that would be necessary. And then I pulled back, saying, "Of course I would have to ask them, but I don't think they'll say 'No'." And I got away with it. They didn't contradict me. So that was my whole thinking.

Now, was I trying to contradict the Taoiseach? Was I trying to contradict other Ministers who'd said that? No, I wasn't trying to do that. Maybe I wasn't sufficiently attuned to the political happenings that were going on in Dublin because I'd been in Brussels and Frankfurt and, you know, doing all these discussions. When the Taoiseach said ... of the time said, "We're not in negotiations," I took that to be the standard thing ... understood, by informed people, to say, "Oh you're not in negotiations, you're in pre-negotiations", and that it was one of these kind, "Oh, you know, we'll go into the little room, we'll have this round table, and we'll have this square table," that's that what he was ... he wasn't ... so when I said well, we're not ... I didn't say we were in negotiations, we were in discussions, "I hope that, I hope it will be successful, I will suggest that we go into a ...". So I thought I was safe enough on the political arena. I knew they wouldn't be all that happy that I made the announcement but I didn't realise they'd be so unhappy.