Professor Patrick Honohan:

Because the loans were so ... that had been made in 2005, '06, '04, were too bad and the collaterals weren't good enough and so forth. And remember that NAMA - people often say "Oh, well, things got a lot worse and, you know, the problem was 2010 and 2011." NAMA was paying the price at the November 2009 prices. So NAMA wasn't saying, "Oh I'm sorry now, I was going to pay this amount but the prices have just fallen in March and April and May". The prices continued to fall. It's lucky they came back because otherwise NAMA would be heading for a big loss. So those losses were embedded and when it became evident to the market ... and probably the timing of the way it became evident, in August and September of 2010, coming just to the cliff, nobody was going to roll their deposits. Now why did we not clean up the banks, close down this one, Anglo was there as a running sore, why did we not close it down? If we'd closed it down, as I mentioned before, the guarantee was there and all of the bondholders would say "We noticed that you guaranteed all this stuff, and our bond isn't due until 2011 or 2014 or some date like that but our bond also contains an acceleration clause that says if a bank is closed down, then our bond falls due immediately. So it's due immediately. Government, you have guaranteed this, pay the money." So, we couldn't do any of those drastic steps, which might have helped build confidence - though it's very hard to build confidence by closing a bank, as you see even nationalising Anglo in January 2009 had a ... the way it came out, had a very adverse effect on confidence, which was not expected; not expected at all, that nationalisation in January of 2009. I think it probably ... adverse confidence, this relates to your question, what was done, I think the fact ... oh no, I'm sorry, I'm going into, risk going into territory that's-----