Professor Patrick Honohan:

No. I did actually have sight of the ... Peter Bacon is somebody that I've known professionally for years, and he did ask me, he said, "You know about bank write-downs ... What do you think of this idea?" Or, "What do you think should be done first of all?" And then a few weeks later, "What do you think of this idea?" And so I did have sight of the proposal, and actually the reason I had sight of the proposal was that Brian Lenihan, who I'd been in touch with, as we talked about on a previous occasion, about fiscal matters, he said, "Why don't you look at what Peter Bacon is cooking up?" So I did, and I wrote to the Minister and expressed my views on it, and I generally was supportive of it. I was a bit concerned at that stage, as many people were, that it would be used as a way of gifting money to the banks, so that the haircuts would not be steep enough, and that the banks would be let off the hook, and that NAMA would be ... would end up taking huge losses. Now it looks like that's not going to happen, and, of course, there was the mechanism of the subordinated debt, which introduced a buffer, which was basically something that I suggested.