Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Governor, in 2011 you responded to a question that I put in relation to the programme of assistance, or the bailout, you said, "I was not all that happy with the negotiations, not that I think it was a bad deal." You went on to say, "There were a lot of missed opportunities", and you went to give a specific example. You said, "For example, the managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, last week proposed that the EFSF should now be able to inject capital directly into banks, not just lend money to governments. This is not agreed in Europe." You went on to say:

To my mind, we could have developed something like this and instead of Irish taxpayers' money being put into banks, the EFSF's money would be put into them and it would own 99.8% of AIB. This would have reduced the indebtedness of the State and lowered the risk.

Was this something that you were suggesting at the time, or something that could have been done?