Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Can I take you, Governor, to September 2010, when the future of Anglo Irish Bank was under serious consideration? And I recall at that time and I believe it was 7 September 2010, when a number of Members of the Oireachtas were invited to a private briefing in the offices of Anglo Irish Bank on Burlington Road and I attended at that time. I think there were, perhaps, over 20 Members of the Oireachtas attended and we received a presentation from Alan Dukes, Mike Aynsley and Maarten van Eden, the chief financial officer, and they made a very strong picture at the time that really, Anglo should be split into a good bank and a bad bank and they highlighted, from their perspective, the risks of being over-dependent on a duopoly of AIB and Bank of Ireland and they stressed the need for a corporate bank to emerge from what remained of Anglo Irish Bank. Now, the following day, the Government made a decision and it was announced rejecting that plan and essentially splitting Anglo Irish Bank into a deposit bank, which would just hold deposits and a recovery bank which would be wound down over a period of time.

So can you tell the inquiry what advice were you giving the Government at that time in respect of the decision they were about to make on the future of Anglo? Did you support the proposal by the management team to create a good bank from what remained of Anglo, or did you support the wind-down of the overall entity?