Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, I mean, the Deauville declaration, as markets started to appreciate what it meant, was a departure from tradition, where traditionally, if governments into trouble but they should be able to get out of it, the IMF would come in, provide a loan to tide them over. Now the Deauville declaration seemed to be saying, "Oh no ... if governments are in trouble, first hit has to be taken by the private bondholders and then there'll be assistance." So, actually, Jean-Claude Trichet was very much on top of this, he could see the ... the market dynamic that was going to follow from this because he'd understood all these debt negotiations over years and years and he was very alarmed at this development. It took the markets a few days to realise that, but then it added to ... step by step, other pressures came on and as the spreads on Irish Government debt went up and up, that was the trigger for me to recognise that things couldn't get back. Could they have recovered from the Deauville declaration? They tried to say, "When we talk about this, it'll only be later, not now." But the markets-----