Professor Patrick Honohan:

No. You see ... was I surprised? I was worried because Ireland was being held out because of the excellent, I have to say, excellent, well-organised fiscal response engineered by the Minister and by the Government to ... a prompt response to the looming fiscal crisis and the actions that were taken, I think, in the summer of 2008 and then also in the early budget brought forward budget in October 2008. Ireland was being praised in Europe as having been ahead of the curve, taking the corrective actions early on. But what I was beginning to be conscious of was that it might not be enough and particularly with these bank losses, it was not ... we were in a delicate situation and I ... he was being, as other Ministers were, they were being praised in Brussels for, you know, having coming out of everything and it wasn't ... we weren't out of everything.