Professor Patrick Honohan:

So, I wasn't part of the discussions on that. It came out, I thought this was a good step forward, this gives a clear political signal for achieving whatever we can achieve in terms of improving the financing arrangements around this. And various initiatives were taken after that, some suggestions were ... different types were retained from different parts of the ... of the ... administrative group in Dublin, you know, the Department of Finance, the NTMA and so on.

My idea was that the whole financing arrangement around Anglo Irish Bank, this was the mechanism that would work best and, all in all, I suspect, although there was no explicit link, and everything was done strictly in compliance with a ... with central banking legislation, and with contracts of law, the financial advantage to the State of the way the Anglo Irish Bank liquidation worked out, and the way this thing, this promissory note, was structured around that, was probably seen by the political, other ... the Ministers in other countries, as being at least part of the delivery of that political commitment. They hadn't delivered it but they probably thought, "Well, you got the promissory note."