Professor Patrick Honohan:

No, I think, to get the ... to get a big bail-in or something like that at the time, you would have needed a heavy version and probably an unconstitutional version. Even implementing the BRRD, which is potentially very heavy, it will be challenging. It will be challenging in respect of existing debt, so the RRD legislation ... European legislation on resolution, requires banks to hold sufficient "bail-inable" debt.

Now, can you ex-post declare existing debt to be bail-inable or do you have to create new debt? This is an open question. So, the resolution legislation which was very quickly developed in ... and introduced in, I think, in December 2010, was ... came on time ... in time. It was going to be of no use to us during the period, September 2008 to September 2010 because we were not resolving any bank at that stage because the Government guarantee was in place. But the preparatory work was going on, obviously.