Professor Patrick Honohan:

I don't think they tried though to ... very hard to get them to stop paying dividends, 'cause I think they ... in some of the papers, including 2008, I believe ... or 2007, 2008, I think that ... I saw in some papers that the idea that well, it wouldn't weaken the banks in the stock market if they ... so it would be a bad signal, so it would be better to stay out and companies sometimes pay out dividends when they haven't made any profits in order to achieve stability. But, given what happened subsequently, it does seem like a mistake to have allowed them.