Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, I mean, the ... as I say, there wasn't any discussion that it was ... fait accompli... that already political decision had been taken in Europe. We will charge the European ... the IMF interest rate. Well, that was a high interest rate because of what a high multiple of our quota we were borrowing from the IMF. We were borrowing really high percentages and I could've imagined that being overridden as it subsequently was, by a sense that, "No, no, this doesn't make sense. We're all in Europe here. Everybody else in Europe can borrow money at much lower interest rates, why are we imposing this very large surcharge?" And that was brought down in June 2011. It would have been nice if that had been ... if that sense had been there earlier on. But Greece hadn't got that so why could we expect it? Both Greece and Ireland got it pretty soon after that, but I don't think there was any room for manoeuvring. The complexity of European negotiations means you can't just say across the table, "And okay, and about the interest rate, are we okay then with it ... you know, take three percentage point off it?" No, there are parliaments, there are 19 governments and so on and so on.